Hana adventures and trees

Well hello there. How are you? Well I hope.

I’m exhausted- Just got back from a camping trip with all the other WWOOFers. We camped Saturday night in the costal Kipahulu area of Haleakala National Park. We got a campsite right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the water, near a lau tree, and with a spectacular view of the Haleakala crater. We visited Seven Sacred Pools- seven waterfalls/swimming holes. Swimming around waterfalls still hasn’t gotten old. We then hiked through mango, banyan, and bamboo trees (among others of course of which I still don’t know what they are called- but are not nearly as impressive as the three I mentioned sooo they remain unknown) to an awesome 400’ waterfall. It was a pretty magical place. I don’t even have the energy to try to describe the feeling being in its presence.

Sunday we went on a beach tour. First beach was the “white sand beach”- Hamoa beach. Hamoa is apparently ranked as being one of the top 5 best beaches in the world. It’s what you would envision as a typical tropical beach- white sand, clear blue water (so coral or rocks! Yes!), surf not too intense, lush greenery surrounding it. It was my favorite beach to swim at for sure.

Next beach was Red Sands beach. It’s not really sand- more like red rock and pebble beach. There are lots of places to cliff dive into the ocean. I jumped about 25 feet. Jumping was great, but getting out was the hard part. You have to wait for a wave to bring you up on a rock and then climb up lava, which is sharp.

Last beach was Black Sands beach-again more like pebble/rock, but there it did get a bit sandy in a few spots as well. The lava tubes and caves there were great to explore. I really enjoyed being at all three beaches, they were all drastically different, but all still very beautiful and serene.

I’m covered in mosquito bites again (still), banged up my knee, recovering from cuts on the bottom of my toes, sun-toasted, adventured, and not well rested- hope I’m ready for work this week!

I moved out of my tent into the “goddess den” which is a nice dirty little cabin with an amazing view of the ocean, a waterfall, and the Haleakala crater (when it’s not being shy behind the clouds) that I share with two other ladies. They will both be moving out in the next two weeks so our group of 7 wwoofers will now be down to 5. It will be interesting to see how that goes. When I got here there were 9 wwoofers. I guess the farm is going to start phasing out wwoofers and get interns in instead. I really don’t like that idea. I really like that this place has given me the opportunity to learn without having any previous experience or knowledge about farming/agriculture. It’s been such an enriching experience and I’ve definitely grown a lot. At the same time I think that any intern that would pay to come here for college credit would be disappointed. Although they say this farm is an education center not much has been taught to us- just learning though doing, and I don’t think that’s what an intern would find to be rewarding. The owner/managers keep going back and forth between wanting this to be a production farm or a demonstration farm. There’s actually quite a bit of drama and it’s pretty amusing to see. I hope the best for the farm though because it’s been so good to me.

The trees out here make me really happy! There are Rainbow Eucalyptus trees that have different colored layers of bark and when the top layers peel off it reveals a different color, they are so smooth, and perfect for hugging! On our way to Hana we stopped to explore them. There was another lady there hugging the tree and so the 4 of us other girls found our own tree and hugged it too. I think it was a pretty amusing sight for many of the passersby.

Mango trees must be the most majestic of all fruit trees. They are so massive. When you drive by them you get a strong smell of vinegar from all the fallen and fermenting mangos. Fresh mango, right off the tree is soooo delicious. Same goes for coconuts, of which I’ve been drinking a lot from. I’m going to miss all the bounty of fruit out here when I go back to the mainland. Free avocados, papayas, mangos, bananas, coconuts, plus all the farm produce has really been an awesome treat.

Banyan Trees are also massive and fun to climb on. The branches vine down and root back into the soil so it looks like many trees connected in the limbs.