Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [384]
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GETTING THERE & AWAY
The mule trail down the pali is the only land route to the peninsula, either on foot or by the mule rides. It is possible to combine hiking and flying. The island’s activity/tour operators (Click here) and Molokai Mule Ride (above) can organize all details of your visit.
Air
The beauty of flying in on these small prop planes is the aerial view of the pali and towering waterfalls. Passengers need to first book a tour with Damien Tours (left) before buying air tickets, otherwise you will be stuck at the airport. Even then you are still likely to be stuck at the airport as the flight schedules don’t mesh well with tours. The morning flight down from Ho’olehua may arrive before 7:30am and you’ll have to wait at the landing strip for the tour bus at 10am. If you are coming from another island, you may need to fly to Moloka’i the night before. Return trips ‘up top,’ as they say locally, to Ho’olehua are more convenient and allow for easy connections to Honolulu and Maui. Pacific Wings (888-575-4546; www.pacificwings.com) and its PW Express subsidiary have a range of fares and tour packages.
Note: charter carrier Paragon Air receives many complaints and is rated ‘unsatisfactory’ by the Better Business Bureau.
Foot
The trailhead is on the east side of Hwy 470, just north of the mule stables, and marked by the Pala’au park sign and parked Kalaupapa employee cars. Your car will be safest parked across from the mule stables. The 3-mile trail has 26 switchbacks, 1400 steps and drops 1664ft in elevation from start to finish. It’s best to begin hiking by 8am, before the mules start to go down, to avoid walking in fresh dung, though you have no choice on the return trip. Allow an hour and a half to descend comfortably. It can be quite an adventure after a lot of rain, though the rocks keep it from getting impossibly muddy. You can also hike down and fly back up.
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WEST END
Seemingly deserted and just a couple of missed rainfalls from becoming the desert, Moloka’i’s West End has an outsize role in the island’s past, present and future.
It has a powerful place in Hawaiian history and culture. Pu’u Nana is the site of Hawaii’s first hula school, and the Maunaloa Range was also once a center of sorcery. In recent decades, much of the land has been controlled by the Moloka’i Ranch, and its fortunes for better and more recently for much worse have affected the entire island. Hale O Lono Harbor is the launching site for the two long-distance outrigger canoe races (Click here). The island’s longest beach, Papohaku Beach, dominates the west coast.
Once you pass the airport, Hwy 460 starts to climb up through dry, grassy rangeland without a building in sight. The long mountain range that begins to form on your left past the 10-mile marker is Maunaloa, which means ‘long mountain.’ Its highest point, at 1381ft, is Pu’u Nana.
Given the woes of Moloka’i Ranch (see the boxed text, opposite) the atmosphere out west is a bit bleak. With the exception of one superlative store, Maunaloa might as well hold tumbleweed races, while the Kaluakoi resort area is beset by financial troubles. Still, you can ignore all the earthly turmoil on one of the many fine beaches.
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HISTORY
During the 1850s, Kamehameha V acquired the bulk of Moloka’i’s arable land, forming Moloka’i Ranch, but overgrazing eventually led to the widespread destruction of native vegetation and fishponds. Following his death, the ranch became part of the Bishop Estate, which quickly sold it off to a group of Honolulu businesspeople.
A year later, in 1898, the American Sugar Company, a division of Moloka’i Ranch, attempted to develop