Welcome to Brad's online memory archives.

Iao Valley

Paul and his brother Jim invited us to hike Iao Valley with them yesterday. It was beautiful!

The trail itself was really cool. There were times it looked like this:

Open and airy.

Open and airy.

But most of the time it looked like this:

Close and jungly.

Close and jungly.

The weather was perfect – it was cool and breezy. The scenery was amazing. It was important to stop when looking at it though, so we wouldn’t trip on roots or slip in mud.

Beautiful!

Beautiful!

I liked the beautiful scenery, but it was the close-up stuff that caught my attention the most. We walked through thousands of guava trees. They were blooming. It was a delicious scent.

I can almost smell the fragrance just from looking at the picture.

I can almost smell the fragrance just from looking at the picture.

But what I liked even better than the flowers was how smooth their trunks were. As we passed by them, I couldn’t resist putting my hands on them. They were cool and smooth and strong.

They helped a lot with the slippery mud, too.

They helped a lot with the slippery mud, too.

There were many wild coffee plants growing in the valley. Almost all of them had beans on them, but finding ripe, red beans was difficult. We were able to find some though:

Shiny and red.

Shiny and red.

We decided to try tasting the flesh of the coffee. The bean inside was wet and soft and slippery. The skin around it was thin, but had a fresh flavor, much like a sweet pepper. It did not in any way taste like coffee.

Tasty!

Tasty!

The end of the trail is called Table Top. We had lunch and rested a little. My pictures of Table Top aren’t very good, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it was cool.

After we hiked back down to the bottom, we swam in the stream. It was cold, but very fun. I decided I would have a hard time inching my way into the water, so I jumped in:

Jumping.

Jumping.


Landing.

Landing.

It was a fun hike, but we were exhausted when we got back home. Lloyd and Curt walked to the beach to rest there. I fell asleep on my living room floor. We spent the evening just hanging out and watching TV.

6 Comments

  1. Carol

    …and did we all remember our sun screen and insect repellant before we left?

    You gents look like you belong in all those scenes – have you been filming a documentary about several mainland men “living” n the Island? It would surely be a hit – I’d buy the DVD.

    [Hoping no huge insects bit anyone during your long hike…I hear they grow ’em big over there…]

  2. Deborah

    Looking at how close the trees and branches were to you makes me think there might have been creatures in there that would latch on to you. Any problem with that?

  3. Kim

    Time spent hiking is time well spent. What great memories. Glad you didn’t break your spine jumping in. It doesn’t look that deep.

  4. Lauren

    What a fun day! I’m glad you got to commune with nature and all that. 🙂

    The coffee bean eating intrigues me. Do you think you’d get jittery if you ate too many of them?

  5. Peggy

    Excellent!! It’s like you’re exploring every inch of Maui.

    I think I would have had a hard time walking thru the jungle parts…I have a fear of snakes. Are there snakes in Hawaii?

  6. Brad

    Since a few of you have asked or commented about critters:
    There are no snakes on Maui. There are no chiggers. There are some mosquitoes, but I’ve never seen them in any quantity and they were nowhere to be found yesterday. There are no leeches, so we didn’t have to worry about that in the water. In fact, there were very few bugs at all on our hike.

Leave a Reply to Peggy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© 2024 bradaptation.com

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑