Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [371]
Unlike the arid west, this is tropical Moloka’i, with palm trees arching over the road and banana, papaya, guava and passion fruits hanging from the lush foliage ripe for the picking. As you drive, you’ll catch glimpses of ancient fishponds, the neighboring islands of Lana’i and Maui, stoic old wooden churches, modest family homes, beaches and much more. But don’t take your eye off the road for long or you’ll run over a dog sleeping on the yellow line.
This being Moloka’i, this intoxicating drive is rarely crowded and cars tend to mosey. Of course for the final third, when the smoothly paved road narrows down to one sinuous lane, you have little choice but to slow down, but that’s just as well, as each curve yields a new vista. The final climb up and over into the remote Halawa Valley is breathtaking.
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MOLOKA’I FOR CHILDREN
Free sport kite-flying lessons at the Big Wind Kite Factory (Click here)
Rent a house for running-around room, plus usually a TV, DVD and often games
Explore under the sea in the calm, shallow waters of Twenty Mile Beach (Click here)
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On the practical side, bring gear so you can swim and snorkel at beaches that catch your fancy along the way. There’s no gas east of Kaunakakai but there is an excellent small grocery and lunch counter about halfway, in Puko’o. Most of the choicest rentals are found along the drive; see the boxed text, Click here, for a list of agents. Mile markers make it easy to find things.
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KAWELA
Kakahaia Beach Park is a grassy strip wedged between the road and sea in Kawela, shortly before the 6-mile marker. It has a couple of picnic tables and is always popular for that high point in the local’s weekend calendar: the family picnic. This park is the only part of the Kakahai’a National Wildlife Refuge (www.fws.gov/kakahaia) open to the public. Most of the 20-acre refuge is inland from the road. It includes freshwater marshland, with a dense growth of bulrushes and an inland freshwater fishpond that has been expanded to provide a home for endangered birds, including the Hawaiian stilt and coot.
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KAMALO
Even if you are already married, swear you won’t get married, or have no one to marry, you’ll be swept away by the quaint charm of little St Joseph’s Church, one of only two of the four island churches that missionary and prospective saint, Father Damien, built outside of the Kalaupapa Peninsula that still stand (the other, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, is 4 miles further on; Click here). This simple, one-room wooden church, dating from 1876, has a steeple and a bell, five rows of pews and some of the original wavy glass panes. A lei-draped statue of Father Damien and a little cemetery are beside the church. It is just past the 10-mile marker, where the road – like the snakes St Patrick chased out of Scotland – becomes sinuous.
Just over three-quarters of a mile after the 11-mile marker, a small sign, on the makai (seaward) side of the road, notes the Smith-Bronte Landing, the site where pilot Ernest Smith and navigator Emory Bronte safely crash-landed their plane at the completion of the world’s first civilian flight from the US mainland to Hawaii. The pair left California on July 14, 1927, destined for O’ahu and came down on Moloka’i 25 hours and two minutes later. A little memorial plaque is set among the kiawe trees and grasses.
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’UALAPU’E
A half-mile beyond Wavecrest Resort condo development, at the 13-mile marker, you’ll spot ’Ualapu’e Fishpond on the makai side of the road. This fishpond has been restored and restocked with mullet and milkfish, two species that were raised here in ancient times. It’s a good place to ponder the labor involved in moving these thousands of volcanic rocks.
With a striking view of green mountains rising up behind, and the ocean lapping gently out front, the Wavecrest