They made it without a hitch! They arrived on Thursday very weary in well doing, so I gave them some leis and they were off to their hotel
Friday Faith and I did a bit of shopping while my parents relaxed on the beach. That night Brian and I shuttled them all to Tiki’s for dinner and cocktails!
That’s all until they get back from their cruise on Saturday. Phew!
The trailhead to Likeke falls is at the same parking lot as Old Pali. I did this before with Jess on my birthday. It’s a wicked quick hike “usually done in 24 mins” according tom AllTrails. So we knocked it out after we finished Old Pali. Not much to say about it, it was certainly busier (typical for a Saturday) which didn’t make for much fun when we got there, but we came, we saw and had another adventure. It was pretty muddy and slippery today.
Brian and I had a morning to go adventuring and our plan was to tackle the Koko head stairs together. However it’s been rainy so we decided it wasn’t the best idea. It occurred to me the night before that I haven’t brought him to the Old Pali Rd. hike and I haven’t done the part I set out to do with KOSC; take it all the way to the Pali Lookout.
The parking doesn’t open until 8 am anyway, so we had a leisurely morning and got breakfast and headed out around 9am. The parking attendant told us he wasn’t accepting CCs…. whoops… thankfully Brian had cash and we managed to scrounge together $5, which he accepted even though it cost $10. Yay!
Anyway, we set out and Brian was in awe, just as I was the first time, although I was way more appreciative this time without having to worry about so many people. We meandered our way up the winding “road”. It is really an abandoned highway being taken over by a jungle and is as cool as you’d expect.
We got to the real pali highway, where you have to duck under it, and then continued on up toward the lookout.
Almost the entire way is paved, which was a significant difference to my last experience going to the other lookout which was very muddy and slippery. This made for a much more enjoyable experience! And much better views!
We found these giant yellow flowers and Brian humored me when a second one fell serendipitously in front of us and I put it in his hat.
It took us an hour and a half, 3.3 miles and 850ft elevation in total. It was awesome! I’m so glad I remembered to introduce this hike to Brian and that we had a very pleasurable experience this time.
Hiking in Hawaii is a very unique experience. I suppose it could be compared to somewhere like Fiji if I had to guess… but it’s very different from hiking in New England and I’d go as far as to say most of CONUS. You can never be too sure about the “officialness” of a hike, or to put it plainly “am I allowed on this part of land”. I’m not fully clear on why this is, but I think it has a lot to do with the history of Hawaiians and the respect of ‘aina (land). There seems to be this back and forth between the cultural “everyone has access to all land” and “yes that’s true but we started this thing called private property” and “there are certain ancient places that shouldn’t be disturbed”. Then you throw in money and politics and it’s one big pot of “Is this hike allowed or no?” So it’s all just kinda weird. The best example of this is the controversial stairway to heaven hike.
I have done hikes that are labeled “private” on All Trails. It’s labeled Private because it’s inside the military base. So, really, is it all that private?
All this to give me justification for trying another “Private” hike called Deadman’s catwalk. It’s at the top of a ridge accessible by an access road. I’ve had a lot of requests to do this hike for KOSC, but I had real reservations about it. So I thought I’d ask Jess to go check it out with me first.
Well, when we get there, there’s a HUGE sign saying NO TRESPASSING and HIKING NOT ALLOWED and a big locked gate. This is different than other “private hikes” that have a dingy fence and small do not enter sign. It makes Jess and I uncomfortable, but friends of ours have done it so… we try. As we get closer, a car enters, and we kinda stay back on the sidewalk for a bit.
After getting over the fence, we start walking up, to see a sign that says HIKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Gulp. We try to ignore it. Then we get higher and a truck drives by. Jess kinda runs to hide, I think to myself there’s no way I’m not being seen… and the truck drives by without saying anything.
Finally, we get to another gate, and it has huge signs again. It was just the final straw… I wasn’t comfortable continuing. I kept thinking to myself that it’s a bit hypocritical of me, who has started to loathe the damage hiking tourists do to our neighborhood, to be doing something similar to someone’s property who clearly does not want hikers. It’s not like it was some jungle hike with signs saying “stay out”. It had multiple gates and multiple huge signs. Jess was with me, so we left and went to tackle a back up hike, Koko crater arch.
Koko crater arch is on the ocean side of koko crater (the crater hike with the famous railway “stairs” I attempted). You park at the Halona blow hole parking lot, walk the shoulder of a decently busy road, and then veer to the right up the crater. This is looking back at the path we just took.
Just beautiful coastal scenery looking up toward Haunama Bay.
It has been pretty windy lately, so I didn’t make it much further than this to the arch. That face gets really steep. I’d do it on a less windy day, but really I got a picture of the arch and some scenery so I didn’t feel I needed to. People like to get pictures under and on top of the arch.
To the left of Jess you can see a rope people use to get on top. She investigated inside a bit and said there was a steep drop.
Here’s one image from our trespassing hike. This is looking back toward koko and Hawaii Kai… the goal was to get to a platform to look over toward Waimanalo, our side of the island. Oh well.
I had a chance to take a hula lesson! I think I found my new calling!
We had an awesome time learning about the culture of Hula Dancing. There’s a competition called Merrie Monarch coming up in a couple weeks on Big Island that will be streamed on YouTube if you want to watch!
She taught us a lot of Hawaiian language and about a few “props” she made by hand out of gourds (drums) and bamboo. The feathers on one of the props were plucked one by one from birds to make. It was a rule not to pick more than one from the bird out of respect.
Shave Ice is a big thing in Hawaii and in my head it was essentially a snow cone… and so I’ve never been super ambitious about trying it. However, a few friends have hyped it up recently and so Brian and I went to give it a try. WoW Wow!! We’ve been missing out! I don’t know why it’s so much better than a snow cone but it is. The flavor is so much better and… authentic? maybe? To top it off (or, rather, bottom it out?) there’s a scoop of macadamia nut ice cream on the bottom. This is not normal for Shave Ice, I don’t think, but the place we went called Island Snow is known for this. Brian and I shared an adult one. For our shave ice flavors we picked snawzberry and big island guava. 10/10 recommend trying!
