After spending the last 3 weeks of my life in Hawaii 2 things have become apparent to me:
1) You cannot trust anyone wearing a Hawaiian shirt (in the service industry) and
2) Hawaii is the most amazing place in the US.
John and I have spent the 2nd part of our Hawaiian adventure on Maui where we were politely welcomed to accommodations at the Trout residents. The first couple days of leisure were spent snorkeling, cliff diving, and paddle boarding with Tanner Trout and his brother Slater (Currently the 2nd best paddle boarder in the world).
We are staying in a guest house outside their main house in Lonipoko that has an amazing view of both the mountains to the East and the water to the West. Our bathroom is an outdoor shower, toilet, and sink surrounded by concrete walls and beautiful Hawaiian flowers.
They have been exceedingly generous to provide us with a place, but we wanted to break up our visit and took a 3 day detour down the road to Hana. Where we car camped in the lush rainforest surrounding Hana. Our daytime meals were made up of tuna sandwiches and nights were full of uncooked chef boyardi with a $9 box of wine. Activities during this time included heaps of hiking, swimming in the sacred pools, body boarding on the beach, walking to blow holes, and taking in the local culture. The Hana rainforest has the 2nd highest amount of rainfall on Earth (Kauai has the 1st). Each night of car camping I was in a constant battle between rolling down the car window to let the ocean breeze come through and quickly rolling them back up when the sporadic torrential downpours began. Needless to say I did not get much sleep and the more somber sleep I did receive was relative to how much rain I slept in. The rain swept in at an angle from the West and we parked facing north. John was in the passenger seat. He slept like a baby . FML.
At the beach the next day we met a 20 year old Hawaiian named some form of the word Chason. He politely asked us to borrow a light to smoke his joint and further proved his hospitality by allowing us to drive him around Hana until we found a family member that could give him another ride. Chason had lived his whole life in Hana and spoke in thick pigeon (broken Hawaiian English). This was at times difficult for me to understand but I managed to make out that 50% of the people in Hana grew their own marijuana product in fields behind their homes, and he started smoking at the age of 6 (which explained a lot after getting to know him). He lives with his family and doesn’t work (which is culturally customary of many Hawaiians). In talking to Chason I learned a lot of insight on Hawaiian culture (but I guess after smoking that much weed everything might sound insightful. Hahaha jk). For example most westerners believe strongly in the idea of private property. Many Hawaiians believe that since people are mortal and the land is everlasting no one really owns the land we are all borrowing it so it should be shared among everyone (I have to side with the Hawaiians on this one). The logic makes sense. Because of this westerners who buy land are often agitated by the many Hawaiians who squat on it. “Sorry bra, should have colonized another culture”. Anyways we gave Chason a ride into town where he met up with his uncle (in Hawaiian uncles, and aunts are just terms used to refer to a friend who is older than you.)
It interests me to know what it must be like to live in such a small isolated land for your entire life. It makes me think what kind of person I would be if this was all I knew.
