Tuesday: Molokai

The morning of our ferry trip to Molokai dawned clear and beautiful. We walked to slip #3 in the Lahaina Harbor to check-in for our trip. Our package included round-trip ferry rides, and a rental car for our use to explore the island for the day.

This is the Molokai Princess, our ferry:

All that wear and tear on the ship may inspire reservations in some, but sometimes you have to ask yourself: do you want a little adventure in life, or do you want a boat that’s sound? It’s really all about your priorities. That is, until you’re bouncing like a cork in the middle of the channel, not puking your guts out by sheer willpower alone; hoping to avoid embarrassing yourself in front of the group of 70+ year old travelers who are oohhing and aahing with every dip and sway of the ship, while you slowly turn green… but not until the trip back across the channel. On the way there, it was an enjoyable boat trip on a sunny morning.

Once we arrived on the island, we were given our rental car, and a couple of suggestions for destinations. Settling on the Kalaupapa overlook and the Halawa (pronounced Halava) Valley. We stopped for lunch at the Molokai eating landmark (their claim, not ours) the Kualapu’u cook house:

Jeremy would like to take a moment to testify to the religious experience he had eating the roasted pork locomoco there: OMG. Imagine roasted unicorn meat atop fluffy perfect white rice, a wonderful fried egg cooked over-medium, and brown gravy that could only have been cooked in heaven by the angles responsible for such things. I knew immediately this was something special. Before I indulged in the first bite, it whispered to my soul. Sweetly… Saltly… So yeah- Molokai. Do the roasted pork locomoco. Period. Tell ‘em Jeremy sent you.

I bought a t-shirt.

We then ventured to the Kualapu’u lookout, which overlooks the old leper colony (or Hansen’s disease/leprosy patient colony, as they really don’t like to be called lepers). The view was pretty amazing, and makes me wonder why the lepers complained so much about being quarantined there – blue water, sandy beaches, beautiful landscape, what’s a debilitating chronic illness when you’ve got all that? (Random leprosy fact: only 4% of the world’s population is susceptible to leprosy).
We also checked out Phallic Rock after the lookout. Phallic Rock is a sacred spot for Hawaiians that represents fertility. See the picture, it’s pretty self-explanatory:
After this, we drove around to the other side of the island to the Halawa Valley. It was a pretty drive over a single-lane road with hairpin turns (very similar to the road to Hana) to a lovely valley with two waterfalls. This is Jeremy trying to figure out where the trail to the waterfalls starts.
We couldn’t find it anywhere. Our guidebook said to look for the no trespassing sign, and then trespass. They failed to mention which of the 10 different no trespassing signs was the right one. More frustrating was that we’d just met a group returning from the falls. Guess we should’ve paid more attention when they were demonstrating the secret handshake on the boat. Instead, we tromped around in the burned out shell of a church, and I acquired 15 bug bites.

After giving up on our waterfall hike, we ended up taking a nap on Murhy’s Beach and then took the ferry back to Hana. If you were reading carefully above, you have a pretty good idea how that 90 minute ferry ride went for me. Nevertheless, I was victorious in my efforts. No puking on the ferry! (Pardon the blurriness in these pictures, the camera lens got wet from one of the many water sprays we endured on the way back across the channel.)

(Victory Shot!)

View of Maui from the water, heading back to the harbor

Lahaina Harbor at sunset

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