Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [379]
Sights & Activities
Purdy’s Macadamia Nut Farm
Purdy’s Macadamia Nut Farm tour (567-6601; www.molokai-aloha.com/macnuts; admission free; 9:30am-3:30pm Mon-Fri, 10am-2pm Sat) lets you poke your pick of macadamia nuts as Tuddie Purdy takes you into his 80-year-old orchard and personally explains how the nuts grow without pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers.
Everything is done in quaint Moloka’i style: you can crack open macadamia nuts on a stone you poke with a hammer and sample macadamia blossom honey scooped up with slices of fresh coconut. Nuts (superb!) and honey are for sale. Linger and Purdy will go into full raconteur mode.
To get to the farm, turn right onto Hwy 490 from Hwy 470. After 1 mile, take a right onto Lihi Pali Ave, just before the high school. The farm is a third of a mile up, on the right.
Post-a-nut
Why settle for a mundane postcard, or worse an emailed photo of you looking like a tan-lined git, when it comes to taunting folks in the cold climes you’ve left behind? Instead, send a coconut. Gary, the world-class postmaster of the Ho’olehua post office (567-6144; Pu’u Peelua Ave) has baskets of them for free. Choose from the oodles of markers and write the address right on the husk. Add a cartoon or two. Imagine the joy when a loved one waits in a long line for a parcel and is handed a coconut! Depending on the size of your nut, postage costs $8 to $12 and takes three to six days to reach any place in the US; other countries cost more and take longer.
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MO’OMOMI BEACH
When you think of Hawai’i you think of beaches so it is surprising that the islands have very few sand dunes. One of the few undisturbed, coastal sand-dune areas left in the state is found on remote Mo’omomi Beach. Among its native grasses and shrubs are at least four endangered plant species that exist nowhere else on earth, including a relative of the sunflower. It is one of the few places in the populated islands where green sea turtles still find suitable breeding habitat.
Managed by the Nature Conservancy, Mo’omomi is not lushly beautiful, but windswept, lonely and wild. It’s a classic Moloka’i sight: alluring and worth the effort to visit. Follow Farrington Ave west, past the intersection with Hwy 480, until the paved road ends. If you are in a regular car and it has been raining, your journey will end here as there is often a richly red mud swamp here.
When passable, it’s 2.5 miles further along a dirt road that is in some areas quite smooth and in others deeply rutted. In places, you may have to skirt the edge of the road and straddle a small gully. It’s ordinarily sort of passable in a standard car, although the higher the vehicle the better. It’s definitely best to have a 4WD. If you get stuck in a car, you may gift your rental company with a windfall in fees and fines.
Look for the picnic pavilion that announces you’ve found Mo’omomi Bay, with a little sandy beach used by sunbathers. The rocky eastern point, which protects the bay, provides a fishing perch, and further along the bluffs, a sacred ceremony might be under way. There are toilets, but no drinking water.
A broad, white-sand beach (often mistakenly called Mo’omomi) is at Kawa’aloa Bay, a 20-minute walk further west. The wind, which picks up steadily each afternoon, blows the dune sand into interesting ripples and waves. Like a voyeur, you’re here just to look around. Swimming is dangerous.
The high hills running inland are actually massive sand dunes – part of a mile-long stretch of dunes that back this part of coast. The coastal cliffs, which have been sculptured into jagged abstract designs by wind and water, are made of sand that has petrified due to Mo’omomi’s dry conditions.
Because of the fragile ecology of the dunes, visitors should stay along the beach and on trails only.
Tours
The Nature Conservancy (553-5236; www.nature.org/hawaii; Moloka’i Industrial Park, 23 Pueo Pl, Kualapu’u; suggested donation $25) leads