Hiking Hanauma Bay

Good Morning Hanauma Bay~!

Our day started with the alarms announcement that dark-thirty had arrived.

TIME TO HAVE AN ADVENTURE!!!!

Plan of attack ---- Haiku Stairs, Up and Over.

The Haiku Stairs, often referred to as Stairway to Heaven, are more of a spiritual journey than a hike. As you cling to a shaky wet metal ladder, clouds roll up the hillsides along side you, looking down the vertical drop below your feet toy cars on the H3 give you a proper scale to imagine the kind of fall that would happen if the wobbly step beneath were to come off its squeaking rusted bolt.

It's not just in your head, people not having respect for the physical demands of this hike have been seriously injured. That's why the trail is officially closed and guarded (thus the need for an O'Dark-Thirty wake up).

As we made our way to the hidden trail head the rain began.

Damn

It was still dark, but the sky was lit just enough to make out a stretch of grim gray clouds queuing up to take turns dumping buckets of rain on the exactstretch of ridge-line that was to be the day's great adventure.

And THAT'S why there are pictures of Hanauma Bay here instead!

I've been fortunate enough to spend the last three years of my life in Oahu (hubby has more than double that) and this has been the closest we've come toHanauma Bay. And I must say, not a bad hike at all! It's a short walk to the trail head from street parking and you are rewarded with gorgeous coastline most of the way. The path to the top is a little steep, but paved, ending at a power station type of barbed wire government thing. After that the trails are red clay andpahoehoe lava (smooth and easy to walk on).

We spent about 2 hours taking every tail around the Bay. Some were for people, some were not. We made an error in assessing a few that turned out to be pig trails (-_-). At one point we came to the ancestral home of 'Ihi'Ihilauakea (a little bit of research shows her to be the sister of a more well known Makapu'u). We snacked on Fiji apples and strawberry pop-tarts. And after a futile attempt to find a new trail (stupid pigs, making us back track, rablerablerable) called it a day and went home for a nap.

Occasionally we would glance at the darkness surrounding the originally intended hike, and were happy to have aborted it for the time being. Another day stairway, I will wait for you to be ready.