Through purgatory and back (ok so it was more like multiple immense valleys and miles of treacherous switchbacks but hey, close enough), we journeyed to taste the sweet nectar of paradise lost - the famed, secluded Kalalau Beach in Kuai.
Kalalau is only accessable during the summer months when the weather is mild, the tides low and the currents tame. Protected from the masses, you can get there by foot or by sea, so that only the determined and pure of heart can make it. Here, everyone shares food, supplies and even bed linen, while happy, naked, petrouli oil-smelling, hippies frollick openly.
On the Trail
We broke up the trek into two and nine-mile segments on the way out.
The first night we camp at Hanakapei Beach - otherwise known as 'Windy, Muggy, and Hoppin' with Frogs' Beach.
I am secretly miserable (and so was Joanne I later found out) due to incessant itching (mosquitos love vegetarians I am told) and residual feminine issues. YUCK. Nightfall is calm though, and a bright moon, stars, and frogs, emerge to greet us.
The morning after, checking for mosquito bites
The next day sucked ASS. We do nine miles in eight hours. The first six miles, we trek through mosquito-infested tropical fruit forests and up and down knee-numbingly steep, and mind-numbingly long, rocky terrain.
Are we there yet?
Did we walk that far?
To keep myself occupied and sane, I daydream about sipping a chilled glass of Reisling in an outdoor bar in the lower east side of Manhattan, wearing a summer-y tank and a flimsy skirt, basking in the perfect 80 degree warmth of a New York summer, so perfect that the air feels like your own skin.
GOOD GOD. Snapping back to reality, I alternate between slapping at mosquitos, grumbling because I WAY overpacked, and cussing at the trail.
Dried mango slices good.
IT NEVER ENDS. The last three miles are even more tedious and gruelling than the first. Now we are trekking across precarious cliffs of loose red dirt and scree, on trails so narrow they are barely the width of our boots.
Looks so harmless and beautiful from afar.
The tradewinds pick up at 2 o' clock sharp every afternoon, swirling red dirt into our eyes and trying to blow us off the side of the cliffs.
The Three Sisters cliffs.
ARE WE THERE YET? Dusk softens the harsh sun when we arrive - like weary wanderers searching for the promised land - at the mystical Kalalau Beach.
The promised land!
Activities at Kalalau
Set against a backdrop of majestic, awe-inspiring fluted cliffs, the beach offers a vast expanse of soft white sands.
A gurgling waterfall and pool that cascades down from the cliffs to the sand provides clean water for drinking and washing. A plastic pipe, held at the right angle, acts as a makeshift showerhead to spray oneself with water. Sea caves provide a natural, protected and shady campsite.
The valley abounds with bubbling brooks, refreshing ponds and miniature waterfalls in which to play and wash. Fruit trees galore offer ripe mangos, guava, bananas, oranges, egg, passion and other mysterious tropical fruit for picking and eating.
At Ginger Pool, we get massages and sucked 'liquid honey' out of white ginger flower stems.
We pick mangos to lunch on at the Outlaw Pools. Outlaws are the hippy and runaway teenagers who live off the land during the summer months without the required county permits for camping.
I maow-ed on a DEELISH lunch of mangos and more mangos and was so mango-ed out I passed out under the shade by the waterfall, while everyone else splashed around on the waterfall 'slides'.
Mmmmm mangos
At Big Pool, the big attraction was a super algae-covered waterfall 'slide'.
Here, we picked watercress and searched for bananas for dinner. Surprisingly, a day packed with eating fruit and playing in ponds makes one ravenously hungry. Tough life eh? Other fun activities included peeing into the ocean (girls too!), avoiding falling rocks (at dawn and dusk) from mountain goat activity on overhanging bluffs, and scrubbing pots with sand.
We camped for two days and nights under a cave right on the beach.
Kayaking - the morning after
AS IF - hiking twenty-two miles while carrying more than a quarter of my own weight wasn't enough punishment, we wake up the very next morning at 5 a.m. to kayak seventeen miles along the same coastline from which we had just hiked out!
The purpose is to see the Na Pali coast from a different perspective (by sea), but that morning my perspective is lost amidst a fog of sore muscles and groggy sleep - partly due to lack thereof, partly due to the side effects of bonine for motion sickness.
On the ocean at 7 a.m.
In between paddle strokes, I'm sucking down Ginger candy while trying to keep my head from rolling to one side and my eyes from rolling into the back of my head.
Sure, kayaking is fun - if you like getting stung to death by Man o' Wars, getting thrown out of the kayak from huge waves, getting sunburned to a tender beet red, and peeing into the ocean through your swimsuit (pretty fun actually).
And because we just couldn't get enough (of Kalalau)
The next day, just for kicks, we drove to Waimea Canyon where we got yet ANOTHER view of Kalalau Valley - from a lookout point looking to the westward face of the mountains.
Thank god we don't have to climb that.
We made it, twice, and back! That cold Heineken never tasted so damn good.
