E komo mai y’all,

In January, I tossed around some travel ideas in my mind of how I should spend an extended President’s Day weekend. Where should I go? More San Francisco? Mount Zion National Park? Grand Canyon? San Diego? Mexico? What should I do? Half of the country was under snow and ice, which limited my travel options.

After throwing some ideas out to my young, energetic colleague, he nominated Hawaii as a consideration. “Yea! You could totally do Hawaii in a long weekend!” he said. So with his input and two weeks until President’s Day, I made the decision to just go. I bought my plane ticket ($407 from LAX). Now, I was committed.

Only thing, was after buying a plane ticket I learned that dang near every hotel on Maui was booked. Seriously, there were only three open hotels on Maui and the cheapest advertised for $500+ a day.

OK, time for Plan B. Vacation Rentals! With my luck,  most vacation rentals on three websites were completely booked too. What the heck! Then I realized…it was also Valentine’s Day and Maui is the romantic honeymoon island. I’d already bought a ticket, darn it, I’m going! I might have to take my own tent, but I was going. I even saw a listing for a $400 a night teepee on the beach. With each “sold out” response to my vacation rental inquiry, I started thinking this might be my most viable option.

I got desperate lucky and scored a three bedroom beach house in Molokai. Although it was much larger than what I needed and pricier than what I intended, it put me in business. I had travel to and accommodations. I was good to go…for the most part Molokai only has Alamo rental cars and surprise, surprise (in my Gomer Pyle voice), it was sold out, along with the other local rental car companies. Taxis it will be. Sure, with earlier planning, I could have gone for cheaper. Oh well. I was going.

What a beautiful Valentine’s Day gift to myself. What a great way to avoid all photos of flowers and dinners and “We’re engaged!” announcements on Facebook. This was a trip to satisfy my goal of visiting all 50 states. It would be a beautiful way to spend a long weekend. It would be the most romantic Valentine’s Day…the one spent in paradise with myself. Realizing this made me start to question why I hadn’t taken myself on romantic get-a-ways before.  Why don’t I treat myself the way I’d love to be treated by a sweetheart one day? My goodness, I’ll be setting the bar pretty high.

The week after Valentine’s Day/President’s Day is also the week before my birthday, and this birthday would be a major milestone. This trip would be an early and epic birthday gift to myself.

Being pelted by tropic rain

The remoteness of Molokai is what makes it both an ideal paradise and a headache. When I touched down at noon, I had six hours to play on Maui before my ferry departed from Maui and went to Molokai. So I rented a car for an absurd price (most compact rental cars anywhere else on Earth go for $30 a day. Mine went for $400…more expensive than the E-Klasse Benz I cruised around the streets of Germany). I explored the island. Then it poured down rain. Not a Montgomery Thunderstorm-type rain but a nice healthy down pour that would allow crops to grow. Well, this little rain destroyed my plans! The Ferry was cancelled understandable because the seas and some boat-tossing, scary looking waves. But then, the small propeller planes over to Molokai also got cancelled! Access to this island is contingent on weather!

I am stranded on Maui!

But I guess there could be worse places.

Well I guess there could be worse places to be stranded. On Facebook I posted my fun pics of me having a good time.  Meanwhile I was spending a lot of energy testing my ingenuity trying to adapt to this change of plans.

A tour guide calls out to me trying to sell me excursion packages. I explain I’m not interested in tours, I need a hotel! Lisa, the guide, asks, “Do you believe in God?” I tell her I do. So she says “Well Ok. It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry. You need to get some aloha Spirit and have faith everything will work out.”

Of course, as a tour guide, she has hookups on hotels. Calls are made by the tour guide. Meanwhile, an old buddy of mine who recently moved away from Hawaii commented on my pics saying if I needed anything…well, as a matter of fact I do. Only thing is, all his buddies were away for the weekend. All the hotels that the tour guide had connections with were…surprise surprise booked! One hotel even made a reservation for me but when I got there, said it was full. LTW, the sweet tour guide at Kampali Beach Club, took pity on me and offered the sofa of her home.  She had a full house with a husband and two little ones (who were fast asleep by the time we arrived) and still offered me a place.   I could stretch out, use in-door plumbing, it was out of the rain and just perfect.

Morning after the storm

The next morning I woke up before daylight and got a little stir crazy.   I thanked my hosts on my cute travel stationery, as any Southern belle would, and left a box of Krispy Kreams.  I attributed my luck to finding a place to stay to be traveling solo. Had I been in a group or even with another   may not have been offered a place to sleep just because it is harder to hosts bigger groups.  Perhaps if I had a buddy or romantic partner there with me, sleeping in a jeep on a Hawaiian coast could have been wildly romantic or at least an epically funny story. But my stranded alone story had a happy ending and I made a new friend. I decided since I was already in Maui, and the next ferry didn’t leave out until that evening, I might as well travel the renowned Road to Hana.

On the backside of the island

Maui was different after the rain. Yesterday’s cloudy skies concealed the mountains.  The curvy road was a photographer’s dream. So much beauty surrounded me from every angle that I just didn’t have the skills to capture it all. By 10 am I was running out of battery on all my devices!

As the roads twist and turned the land scape changed.  I was just overwhelmed with the gorgeous, lush vegetation.

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn’t help but to wonder what was God thinking when She created both Hawaii and Qatar. And which one was created first? How vastly different these lands were and beautiful in different ways but made by the same creator.  Watching the sun rise as I traveled along the cliffs of winding mountains of the tropical coast I knew my stranded situation had to be divinely orchestrated. My plan was to miss this adventure and hang out solely on Molokai. Had my plan worked out, I would have missed the glory of Maui. Maui wasn’t finished with me yet. It wanted a chance to win my heart as well. This was just another example of how God’s plan is better than my own, a lesson I’ve been learning for the past year. This event was just another reminder not to freak out. Chill. Everything will work itself out, usually better than expected. Just because things don’t go as you plan doesn’t make the whole plan bad. Catch that Aloha Spirit, you are in paradise!

Six hours later I was back in Lanai where I started. The way people talked about the Road to Hana, I thought it would be treacherous. “I survived the Road to Hana” signs lined the walls of all the tourist shops. It was nothing more than a scenic, curvy, back road like the one I grew up on. However, the travelers had terrible driving etiquette. Time after time I had head on, face to face stand offs with cars. Ummm… hello, you just passed a spot you could pull over on; the next spot I can pull over is half a mile behind me. Your move.

Yes, this place is real!

If you’re taking the Road to Hana you’ll need plenty of batteries and car chargers for your cameras and phones, a full take of gas, and a spare tire just in case. If you’re really adventurous, try biking the curvy hills…actually you should probably be a professional biker. If I were to come back to Maui with a partner I might actually plan for a night on the beach in the back of a jeep.  I’d have someone else drive the Road to Hana so I could write about everything I saw and thought.

In all my years of living in the country, I’ve never seen a rooster in a tree

I told the shuttle driver about my journey around the island. “Wow, that’s brave,” he said. “I don’t; even do that and I’m from here.” Had I gotten a flat tire or in a wreck in the back parts of Maui, I would have been out of luck and on my own. Apparently, where the gravel starts is where your rental car contract is voided and you they are supposed to tell you at checkout. They didn’t.

My Maui adventure, as unexpected as it was, turned out to be beautiful and amazing and peaceful. I’m glad my plans fell through which opened doors to new opportunities! I guess that goes the same for life!