We began our first day in Moloka’i with Mass at Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church, which is one of four parishes founded Fr. Damien, this one in 1874. It was a simple, tropical church and a pleasant Mass with friendly people. Our Lady of Seven Sorrows had a very nice monument for the recently canonized St. Damien, which was adorned with leis. Of course, the church he established on the Kalaupapa peninsula, St. Philomena’s, was inaccessible. It had been restored by the National Park Service, who were at that time waiting for all the patients to be gone before they could take on full administration. Earlier that summer, the youngest remaining resident–who was in his late 60’s–pled guilty to transporting crystal meth between Oahu and Molokai. So, despite the isolation there, Moloka’i was not immune from issues facing the rest of the world.
It was a pleasant and lazy Sunday on an island that time seemed to have forgot. We headed down the Kamehameha Highway, a coastal road around East Moloka’i. More like a country road in some places, the trip was unspoiled and beautiful, sometimes even windy and brisk. We made it all the way to the north east corner of the island to Halawa Bay, which has a beach of black and white sand. To get to it from the parking area, we had to wade out into it, but it was truly beautiful.
The road offered many turn-offs, and we drove slowly in some places because it was so narrow. We lost cell phone service, which was only challenging because a third traveler would be joining us that day and we needed to know when to meet her flight in central Moloka’i. Along the drive, we encountered another rainbow after some rain, waterfalls and beaches where it was hard to keep shoes on in the shifting sand. It was a classic Sunday drive, only with a Hawaiian flavor.
By late afternoon, we collected my arriving friend and the three of us spent the evening at the Hotel Moloka’i, which was one of the few resort hotels on the island, and our first meal splurge of the trip for the only night all of us would be together. We ate at the Hiros Ohana Grill, and while I do not remember the order of beautiful places we went to in Hawaii, I can remember the delicious chicken baked in macadamia nuts that I had for dinner, and that the Blue Hawaii cocktails were surprisingly strong. We had been sampling the standard Hawaiian drinks up to that point, and this was by far one of the most potent. We watched a gorgeous sunset from the hotel beach and watched as the colors faded behind the palms and the tiki lights came on. It felt like we had this very tropical tropical island almost complete to ourselves.
