Oh my gosh...today I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life!!!
Seeing our departure from Maui as eminent, I've been trying to pack as many uniquely Hawaiian experiences into our final months/weeks as I can...been doing a bunch of neat stuff I haven't made time for since I first moved here.
Today was one of those.
I met my friend Don (PP-ASEL, fellow hang/para glider pilot, sailplane pilot...a fellow aviator and kindred spirit) at the hangar about 1pm. I've wanted to fly with him since I got my license, he offered to bring lunch and sounded excited about sharing airplane flight with me when we talked on the phone.
Cooler loaded, we did the preflight together and admired the SP, swapping stories and looking forward to a great flight. Don mentioned that he thought there was a small beach near our destination, Kalaupapa, Molokai (PHLU )...maybe we could go for a swim after lunch.
Trouble is...Kalaupapa is sort of off-limits. It's a leper colony and there are still patients living in seclusion on the peninsula, which is virtually inaccessible except by sea or air. The rules are nobody may leave the airport unless permitted by the state dept. of health. So, maybe (if there's a state employee saying 'no') we don't get any beach...we'll see.
The flight over was just excellent. There was an AIRMET for turbulence on the S & W shores of all islands, so we stayed to the north shore of Molokai and followed the sea cliffs down the coast to the tiny little airport on the Kalaupapa peninsula...I think I have a picture in my gallery, lemme see...yah, here we go.
There was this huge crowd of sunday visitors at the airport when we got there...totally weird, I've never seen anyone there at all. It took a few minutes to secure teh plane and find a payphone from which to close our flight plan...and somehow once that was done all the people were gone!
We hightailed it down the path alongside the runway, hurriedly trying to get over the little rise that would conceal us from view...trying to get out of sight and thus out of mind before being spotted by whoever has the job of making sure nobody goes to the beach at Kalaupapa.
Before you get all freaked out about leprosy...the area where the patients live is very small and about 3 miles in the opposite direction of the beach we're headed for...no chance we're going to even see anyone, much less contract leprosy and take it back to Maui to start an outbreak.
Got to the beach and had an awesome lunch sitting on some rocks in the sun. The tide was really low and there was about 100' of exposed rocks all the way out to the water...didn't look too good for swimming. There were only a few bathtub sized tidepools :( We walked down the beach looking for a good swimming spot, came over a little rise and found the most incredible, gorgeous, crystal clear, deep blue tidepool I've ever seen!!!
You can sort of see it in the foreground of the image...near the runway end of the sandy beach. It looks way better in person than in the photo!
We scrambled over the rocks out to the waters edge and hurriedly changed out of shoes/shorts into swimming attire, stashed the sunglasses and watch, donned the goggles and dove in.
Amazing! There were fish everywhere (amazing what making a place off limits does for the reef fish population)...it was beautiful, like swimming in a giant aquarium. We swam and dove off the rocks then climbed over the rocks and let the spray of crashing waves bathe our bodies in warm, salty spray...surrounded by rainbows at the foot of the Molokai sea cliffs.
Absolutely incredible, words cant' describe it. What an awesome, precious, unique experience! I thank God that we were able to share that time together this afternoon before I leave for a new place to begin a whole new chapter of life. Where I'm going there are wonderful treasures, rich moments and ripe opportunities...but no crystalline tidepools or warm salt spray. What a terrific treat to be able to taste what so few people even know exists!