Friday- THE FLIGHT…
We left from Salt Lake to Maui and it was the WORST flight. They bumped us 15 rows for no reason and the new seat I was seated in had a BROKEN monitor so I couldn’t watch a movie; I couldn’t even watch the plane fly across the water! And these babies screamed the wwwwhhhooollleee way to Hawaii.
Saturday: Hawaii :)
We woke up in our little hotel near the bay and watched a GIANT cruise ship come in.
We put all our things in a storage facility (so we couldn’t have it taken from the car along our journey) and set out on the Road to Hana. We drove. We hiked. We hiked. And drove. We saw endless waterfalls, and stopped for tasty treats. The coolest experience was cluttering up a stream of large boulders and ending at a beautiful waterfall and never coming across another person until we were heading back to the car. We went to a red sand beach and explored around. We drove to our campsite in the National park and set up our tent. Then we headed out for a fun night hike!
Sunday: we woke up at our campsite and watched over to the water’s edge to watch the sunrise. We then took a hike through the National Park up to a clearing with three waterfalls. The hike was unique in that it paralleled the river and falls along the way. And it wound in and out of bamboo forests and fruit trees.
We rushed back to the campsite, hot, sweaty, and smelly and began to cleanup our campsite. We dressed into Sunday clothes and started our crazy drive along the Road to Hana to make it to church. Along the way we picked up a hitchhiker, Peter. He was a 17yr old boy from London who was taking a gap year. He was staying in a tent and just hitchhiking for two months around all the islands!
We made it to church. We met a Sis. Yolanda and found out one of her sons is serving a mission in the Orem Stake. She invited us to stay for Sunday school and gave us some cute handouts afterward.
We continued on our journey along the Road to Hana. We stopped for lunch at a little beachside stand and enjoyed eating our food, overlooking the water, with a whale that kept breaching, and a man singing alongside his ukulele.
We found a black sand beach and The Venus pools; they were incredible! Then finished our hours of driving as the sunset. We checked into our resort and I was Sooooo excited to shower!
Monday: After Travis returned from his conference we snagged a poolside lunch and then headed out for our awesome hike. This time the clouds were gone and we could actually see the ocean and valley scenes as we went along. In our way back down we watched whales breaching down in the bay.
That night we met up and had dinner with the Mulkey’s!
Tuesday’s Highlights: Ioa Valley with the Mulkey’s, picking up snacks for the next day’s drive, shopping, and dinner.
Wednesday: we woke up at 3am to drive all the way to and up the volcano so we could watch the sunrise. As always, it was a gorgeous and COLD experience.
Afterward Travis and I took the jeep off roading and parked up at the redwood forest where we hiked completely alone for hours. There was nothing but the sound of breezes through the trees, tropical birds, and the occasional echo of trees falling and sliding down the mountain… that part did scare me! Along the way we came across some abandoned cabins, with eaten up mattresses and an animal skull. We found mountain goat prints and wild bore scat, fresh on the trail.
Thursday: a storm blew in kept us inside. I found this quote during my scripture study, and then I spent the whole of the morning in the laundromat.
I planned to read and write, but ended up meeting people and having a great experience. There was a woman from Texas who sort of glued everyone together and after she left it was just me and a local gentleman, Mino, discussing aallll thing sports. He was a cousin to Coach Kehlani Sitaki. So he knew a lot about BYU. Eventually we’d talked out everything else and he began to open up about the hardships post fire. He then became emotional as we explained about what the fire had been like. The fear. Confusion. The family and friends he lost in the tragedy. We were crying to say the least.
Friday: The storm had blown out and left a soft and colorful sunrise. And the weather cleared up for our WHALE WATCHING!!!
The tour was a once in a life time experience. We’ve done one before and it was a very basic and underwhelming experience. This was anything but the sort!
Very quickly into the tour a large, curious sperm whale came up and decided to play with us. It kept rolling underneath our board and trying to get us to play back. From left to right, over and over again, it would pop up and look at us, wave, roll, and rise its head up like it wanted us to pet it! I’m not joking when I say I could have extended my hand out only slightly and been able to touch this whale. We played with the whale until our captain said we had to get going or we would run out of time to snorkel at the Molokini Crater. As we left, the whale kept gently waving its tale at us, over and over until we were gone.
As we began cruising again, they served a tasty lunch and we saw more pods of whales with their babies along the way. At the crater there were two whales a baby trying to come into the crater to swim with us. The snorkeling was subpar, but still a great experience. And then on the way home a whale jumped full out of the water and we had a free Willy moment. What. A. Cool. Day!!
Saturday: After a beautiful sunrise we set out looking for a good snorkeling spot that wasn’t going to washed out by the high winds. Well that never happened. The weather just wasn’t favorable.
But what we did find were some incredible Lava Fields, yellow tangs, Reef sharks, and some pretty little beachside hikes. We also went to a beach that had turtles, and both red sand and black sand. We met a family from Arizona and had a nice chat.
In the way back we snagged a Lava shaved ice, enjoyed a beautiful sunset, ate dinner at the Hula cafe, and then sat in the dark on the beach for a stretch of time just talking the night away.
We saved our Swan Court breakfast until this morning and then went to church at the visitors ward. I brought a dress that was given to me by my grandma Janet. She brought it back from her mission and Fiji. Tags were still on, and it has never been worn. I just had a feeling I should take it with me and see if anyone in the area could use a beautiful brand new floral dress since they lost all they had in the fires.
There was a woman standing in the primary room and I felt prompted that I should ask her who to give this dress to. She told me it was no coincidence I brought that dress today, and they had just finished collecting lots of donations from a local Drive to hand out to all the members. She said everyone would be coming to that Day to pick out things they needed, and that dress would definitely go to the right person. What an incredible feeling it is when you know you’ve just been a part of a bigger picture moment.
After sacrament, we checked out of the hotel and met up to have one more lunch with Brett and Alexis. We said our goodbyes and then Travis and I decided to drive around the rest of the island. We found a wonderful snorkeling spot for next time! We enjoyed dragons tooth ledge. And we saw lots of sea, turtles, playing in the waves! We snagged some last of our banana bread, checked out the blow hole, and then made our way to an overlook spot for sunset. We sat underneath a lighthouse and enjoyed watching some magnificent whales until the light was all gone and it was time to leave once again.
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