Stories From The Hawaiian Islands: Molokai

After a month travelling through the Hawaiian archipelago, We had the opportunity to visit 5 unique islands and come home with memories and stories from each of them.

Molokai is a Small Town

Before we even arrived, it was apparent that Molokai is a small town. First, to get there, you book a flight on a 9 passenger plane with Mokulele Airlines, we get weighed, our luggage gets weighed and the fellow bringing building supplies from the mainland for a house he’s renovating is crushing the boxes to fit below the line that indicates the height of the cargo hold. I notice that a third of my fellow passengers are wearing hospital bracelets…I’m struck that it’s not just transportation for local business and tourists, Mokulele airlines is also a medical transport for anyone who needs to be in Honolulu for hospital care.

One of those “people” is a premature one week old baby boy, big enough now to be headed back to Molokai with his mother to see his home island and big brother for the first time. An “auntie” (a term of respect used for any elder woman) waiting for the same flight wants to take a peek at him and asks his mother to see a photo of his father, to see if she might recognize him. The new mom obliges, pulling out her phone. All of us coo over the baby.

After a beautiful flight over Waikiki and Diamond Head, we land on the red ground that characterizes Molokai. As a man working at the airport to secure the plane on the tarmac runs by the passengers, he stops to plant a kiss on the baby’s head and says proudly, “my new grandson!” before he runs to chock the wheels of the Cessna. A small town indeed!

On Molokai already, our friends tell us they’ve rented a car because getting around without one would be hard. Except, they didn’t go to Avis or Enterprise. They went to the front desk where the receptionist contacted Jimmy, who explained, he didn’t have any cars to rent except for his own personal car, an early model Toyota that’s seen better days. So we head off in Jimmy’s car to explore, and every where we go people wave at us, until they realize, we aren’t Jimmy.

We head out along the beautiful south coast, out to the Halawa Valley, one of the most scenic drives in Hawaii. But unlike the Road to Hana in Maui or the North Shore of Oahu; we don’t see any other tourists. We see an older couple biking out to the valley, we see locals who wave and then sheepishly realize we aren’t Jimmy, and coincidentally, we see two white vans with about two dozen passengers from the small expedition cruise ship, the Uncruise Safari Explorer that we plan to board the next day when these folks disembark! They are headed into the valley to hike up to the waterfall, where we will hike as our first activity from Safari Explorer.

Later we go into the town of Kaunakakai, looking for lunch and some reef safe sunscreen. At the pharmacy, we run into the young mom and her baby boy from our flight and get to see her toddler and ask how he’s doing with his baby brother. We buy our sunscreen and run into a little league team getting their post game ice cream cones at George’s Ice cream at Kamoi Snack and Go. We find lunch on the street,, under an umbrella, Grandma Grace has filled a color with sushi, salads and other local specialties. We chat with the ladies a bit, choose our meals and take them back to dine back at the hotel.

Once we embarked our the Safari Explorer, we were able to travel with our guides back to the Halawa Valley, where we met a longtime local family who invited us onto their property and guided us into the valley where we hiked past ancient ruins and out to a water fall where we enjoy a picnic lunch we carried in and a swim in the icy cold falls.

That evening, we were reminded again of the “small town” vibe on Molokai when the Uncruise crew has arranged for us to be invited to a Paina, a traditional celebration with food, and sometimes entertainment that is used to celebrate family milestones. This special celebration is also spiritual…we are told that Hawaiians believe that in addition to the living people gathered to celebrate; a birthday, wedding, or anniversary, that the ancestors of those gathered are also present.

This paina was designed to welcome us as guests and was held at the Molokia Museum and Cultural Center, where the docents of this small historical society shared their food in crock pots and bestowed us with leis made of colorful yarn. They shared their stories of their favorite dishes to bring to a paini, showed us a heritage quilt made by local women and we were entertained by a small traditional folk group. It all felt very much like the small volunteer led museum in my summer hometown, where locals share their culture and stories with visitors. The museum also had an exhibition of photos of the people with Hansen’s disease (Leoprosy) who lived in the colony of Kalaupapa. This exhibit explored the humanity of the people who were forcibly resettled because of their illness. While we missed the larger Polynesian Cultural Center run by the Church of Latter Day Saints on Oahu, I feel like we had a wonderful connection with the people who shared their food and art with us here.

As we sailed away from Molokai on our way to Lanai, we can’t help but feel that we were lucky to visit a corner of the world that not everyone gets to experience, and that we were welcomed to a small town by the generous people who live there, even if they just thought we were “Jimmy”!