Kuliou'ou Hike

This past Saturday I went hiking with Angelica, David (shirtless sitting at the picnic table), Anita (pink shirt), Dave (shirtless directly to the right of me in the pic), and PJ (blue shirt). We went to Kuliou'ou, which I'd done one other time with Jorge, Shane and Jacob. I enjoyed this hike much more the second time (for a number of reasons!) and was really glad I got out of the house and enjoyed myself.

It was also great getting to know Anita and Dave. I'd heard a lot about them through Rahul and DnA, and knowing that Subrat is Anita's brother made me very curious about them.


The giant banyan tree ~ halfway up the hike is my favorite part of the whole thing. We stopped on the way up AND on the way down and had good climbing sessions - you can play 'find the people' in the assorted pictures.

It was also fun noticing how much the Coconut Island stairs helped my hiking skills. Having to walk up so many stairs to go home every day really helped me learn the many ways to stair climb. That was very useful towards the end of the hike when it gets all steep and steppy.


The view at the top was quite beautiful as usual, as well as windy. I got pretty cold and was happy I had my raincoat. I have to say that one of the best things about hiking with DnA is that they lov to eat just as much as I do. There was a plethora of snacks to be had at the top of the mountain which meant I didn't have to be stingy and territorial out of fear of hunger. I know I'm pretty ridiculous for that, but I must have some kind of ingrained fear of starvation or something. I'm not quite sure, but I get pretty fierce!




At the top, we met a man who apparently hikes Kuliou'ou every week or something; he told us a story about being up at the top, enjoying the cloudy, misty day when all of a sudden flock of PARROTS started flying past him. he said each bird was a different color. It sounded like quite the magical moment. I think that now every time I hike somewhere in the Ko'olaus I'm going to be hoping to see this elusive flock of parrots.

I have to say that I've been continually surprised how much my attitude during activities is different depending on who I'm activity-ing with. It's nice to feel that I can most likely enjoy pretty much any activity as long as I have the correct company. This realization has put a few things into perspective for me, including the rejection of the idea of anyone saying that they know for sure that they don't like something when they've only tried it once or even a couple of times, or always with the same people. Yes, this is one more area where the entire landscape of experience is important, not just what the picture is of on first glance.

Here's the photo shoot of our downhill climbing session.

I love this picture of David. He's just got the best look on his face!















Here's Angelica and Dave.. aren't they cute little monkeys!










The next one is the 'Where's Waldo' challenge... can you find everyone??










And the final picture of the hike is just how I like it - nice and ridiculous!