BOX 222: Hawai'i 5: Kaua'i, Moloka'i, O'ahu.

Where, you might wonder, could this be? Well, we're in the uplands of West Moloka'i, at the beginning of Anne's and my first (and only) visit to a Hawaiian island much less touristed than the four we'd seen more than once. In this shot, with Anne in the rental car waiting for me to take the picture, you can see mountains in the distance (eastward) and, almost hidden in the clouds off to the right, the island of Lanai and a glimpse of sea.

In my previous post I showed slides of the first part of our visit with Anne's brother Bob and sister-in-law Tripit on O'ahu. Anne and I took a side trip to Kaua'i (our fourth) and flew from there to Moloka'i before spending the rest of our time back on O'ahu. I don't have many photos of our Kaua'i stay, but I'll share what I have, starting with two similar photos of Anne wearing an orange hibiscus in her hair; I can't decide which I like better so I'll show you both:

A big surprise for us when we drove to Poipu Beach, where on past trips we'd enjoyed good snorkeling, was that the cove we liked was closed off because a rare Hawaiian monk seal had come to shore to give birth, and was now residing with her pup. At first we could see only the mother beyond the police tape, but moving to the left and right we could see the pup too:

We were told it was the norm for mother and pup to rest for weeks where she'd given birth, so no snorkeling for us (unless we joined the folks in the rougher water to the right of the third pic).

I don't know where I took the next photo, of plumerias, but it must have on the south shores of Kaua'i, between Poipu and the road heading into the mountains that you see in the following shot:

Back in East Kaua'i we crashed the enormous pool at the very upscale Westin Hotel. That's Anne underneath the fountain in the first pic:

Moloka'i, like each of the Hawaiian Islands, had very much its own personality: a different "feel" culturally and geographically. The hotel we'd booked was in West Moloka'i, a dry, rugged district as you can see in the photo at the top of this post and in the following:

I don't know what the trees are in what looks like an orchard; in decades past there had been pineapple fields, but much of the land in 2000 seemed deserted. Our hotel was laid out as a group of cottages, near a big upscale resort (all now closed).

The only town on this side of the island, really a village, is Maunaloa. I see that I took photos of its rustic post office and some average-looking houses--probably because both Anne and I were interested in local life as portrayed in recent Hawai'i fiction and poetry:

Driving back to Central Moloka'i we had good views of Lanai stretched across the dark band of water:

That afternoon we drove along the south coast, where the road comes extremely close to the water. We stopped at George Murphy Beach:

. . . and continued on eastward until the road curved toward the north:

We had good views of the large ancient fish ponds that the pre-Cook Hawaiians had constructed along the sea:

As the road, sometimes just one lane, curved farther north and inland we had a glimpse of the lusher, greener end of the island, as in these views of a homestead or ranch:

On the way back I photographed another fish pond (again with Lanai in the background):

And we had glimpses of the awesome, mysterious-looking mountains of north-central Moloka'i:

Before going back to our hotel we stopped in Kaunakakai. the main town of Moloka'i, This is the main street:

The next morning we visited a beach at the extreme west end of Moloka'i, Papohaku:

It's a very wide beach and three miles long--a vast stretch of sand. The water in my photo looks safe for swimming, but it has a reputation for being treacherous, so we didn't take chances, especially with the beach being nearly deserted. Our other major excursion on the island was north-central, as we drove toward the sea cliffs that run along the northern shore, over 3500 hundred feet high in places, the highest in the world. The road took us upward through ironwood forests:

Along the hiking path we took through the forest at the top we couldn't see the cliffs themselves, but the misty forest was memorable in itself.

My slides of the last part of our trip, when we rejoined Bob and Tripit on O'ahu, are a miscellany of shots, starting with two of Waimanalo Beach:

One shot shows mountains on the Windward Side with flowering bushes lining the road:

And below you see one of our favorite places in Waikiki, the veranda of the 1901 Moana Hotel, with its great banyan tree in the courtyard. Again I have two similar shots and will just post both of them:

For a look at another kind of early-20th-century architecture in Honolulu, consider these old storefronts, probably on or near King Street. Many of them have been replaced by office buildings or condos in recent times:

I took one more photo of the view from Bob and Tripit's window, but didn't account for the screen. I'll include this odd shot anyway:

Driving out of Honolulu one evening I got this glimpse of a sunset from the passenger's seat:

And finally, probably on the last day of our visit, I have some photos of us at La Mariana, a Sand Island/Honolulu establishment where the food and drinks are good and the decor is very special, made up of all sorts of stuff salvaged from defunct tiki bars and other mid-century Hawaiian locations. Here are a couple of shots--Anne and me, Tripit and Bob--that I really like:

My next box of slides is from January 2001, our next campus visit to Canterbury. I'll save that for the next posts.