Did you miss...?

Hula Returns to Sequim

Honored Elder & Dance Teacher, Mokihana Melendez on the right OMG! So excited that like last year, a Hawaiian group graced Sequim with i...

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Lost on Molokai

When I passed through the little town of  Kaunakakai on Friday, a local told me I should check out its Saturday farmer's market. The fruits and veggies on display there made me wish I lived here all the time. The little Hawaiian bananas taste like someone boiled down a thousand regular state-side bananas, condensing their flavor into each wonderfully luscious apple-banana. Yum... and I wanted to try all the exotic - to me - looking fruits and veggies, but I'm not going to be here long enough to fit them all in. Rats.


There were lots of fruits and greens for sale I couldn't identify.
I guess those giant bananas are plaintain... and those avocados are huge.
The crops were only a small part of the market on the street across from the library. Naturally there were lots of tourist souvenirs for sale, but I seldom buy souvenirs any more.

Lots of homemade items made from tropical materials were for sale
There was one tent that had items for sale that gave me a difficult time though... I stood there maybe a half hour, spending the entire time talking myself out of buying anything.  I often have this same problem, over the same items, but these particular Hawaiian 'things' beg me to take them home.

I thought the Uke on the left was the prettiest thing with strings e-vah
To talk myself out of buying anything I had to remind myself if I bought a ukulele, what were the chances I'd actually put in the time to learn to play it?  I had to entertain myself by watching a woman, who played like Izzy, shopping for a ukulele for her niece. She told the seller it would be her niece's second uke, an improvement over the kid's 'starter uke'. Wow, that woman could play!


Having perused the market and having purchased nothing, I headed east on a tiny highway. The roads out that way were small and gave me an idea how tiny the entire island is. There were several little roads leading to beaches. The first I went on lead to a car filled parking lot. I just turned and drove right back out, not wanting to share a beach. 
Yikes! Cars at the end of the drive
The driveway down to another beach a short distance away was delightfully empty.

Yay! No cars at the drive's end
Hurrah! A Molokai beach all to meself!
What do you do when you find you have a beach all to yourself? Why, you walk down to the sand and you sing "This Molakai beach belongs to ME!" song while doing an impromptu hula. *Sigh, me and my illegal, colonial invasion-ist ways* I videoed my song & dance on my iPhone, but as the sun does one's aged face no favors, you will have to beg me, with sugar-on-top, for a viewing.

I walked on the little beach until finally a couple of young men arrived, outfitted with nets and gear for seine-net fishing (?). On driving out, I discovered I could was lost. I drove around and around the deserted roads and could not find my way back out of the maze of little roads. I drove around a bit over an hour, feeling lost. Eventually, I found some some kane (men) working on an electric grid box, or some such, and asked them the way back to civilization. They pointed me down a road I'd convinced myself was a dead end, and soon I was on my way back to the main town. Whew! That was a close one. I mean, can you imagine being doomed to spend the remainder of your life in paradise?

[Update by Management: Ms Miller hereby promises she will never, ever again, video tape anything vertically. If the good flying spaghetti monster meant for giant black bars to surround videos she'd have not invented horizontal. Honestly... even rhinos & theater screens would be vertical. Enough foolishness now, be gone with you.]