I still don't know what we were thinking, but we decided to take on our first mountain trail at the Napali Coast, starting at Kee Beach after days of raining. In retrospective, that day started as shittily as possible. Never a morning person, I was understandably grumpy when I was forced to wake up and rushed into the convertible we rented. With at least 5 things in my hands, I threw my sunglasses and the necklace I bought the day before onto the dashboard. This was not some ordinary necklace. It was consisted of beautiful delicate bright blue beads with a yellow flat pearl disk as the centerpiece. Most important, it cost me only $20. All the reasons to love something. When I was done dumping down all other irrelevant things into the backseat and turned around to put on my trophy, it wasn't there. I worked up a fit of hysterical obsession, trying to figure out how something physically incapable of evaporating could disappear in the three seconds that my head was turned. After searching the dashboard and the passenger seat for 30 minutes and attempting to cram my fingers into the small slit between the dashboard and the windshield glass, my personal chef finally managed to convince me two things that I refused accept: one, the frigging stupid car ate my necklace, and two, I wouldn't be able to squeeze my fingers into a space 1/4 their sizes to reach for something I couldn't even see.
Deprived of a psychological closure, I acted like a mature grown-up and sat there sullenly until we got to our destination. Kee Beach is actually at the end of the highway that loops the entire island. From there, you walk. And so we did. To be fair to the trail, it was quite fun. I could hardly think of anything more fun than walking on a muddy trail that made you slip 3 times and gave you a muddy butt to prove that you did. Since it has been raining, the mud and water were simply unavoidable. No matter how we tried, they just got everywhere. And by everywhere I meant everywhere. Well, maybe not for that nimble smug guy jumping and shifting balance beside me, but I was definitely covered by mud from waist down. The hell of all this was, it really got kind of fun after a while. With wet and muddy pants, we learned fast that trying to keep clean was as futile as Don Quixote with his wind mills; might as well just tread through the water holes and enjoy splashing each other and spotting a creak where we could clean ourselves up. To be damned, I forgot the bug spray that I brought for this trip and left it in the condo, and the only logical outcome was me being eaten alive by colonies of mosquitoes. Ironically, all that mud on me didn't seem to deter them one bit.
Deprived of a psychological closure, I acted like a mature grown-up and sat there sullenly until we got to our destination. Kee Beach is actually at the end of the highway that loops the entire island. From there, you walk. And so we did. To be fair to the trail, it was quite fun. I could hardly think of anything more fun than walking on a muddy trail that made you slip 3 times and gave you a muddy butt to prove that you did. Since it has been raining, the mud and water were simply unavoidable. No matter how we tried, they just got everywhere. And by everywhere I meant everywhere. Well, maybe not for that nimble smug guy jumping and shifting balance beside me, but I was definitely covered by mud from waist down. The hell of all this was, it really got kind of fun after a while. With wet and muddy pants, we learned fast that trying to keep clean was as futile as Don Quixote with his wind mills; might as well just tread through the water holes and enjoy splashing each other and spotting a creak where we could clean ourselves up. To be damned, I forgot the bug spray that I brought for this trip and left it in the condo, and the only logical outcome was me being eaten alive by colonies of mosquitoes. Ironically, all that mud on me didn't seem to deter them one bit.
When we finally got back to where we parked our car, it was getting dark. We didn't have much time to celebrate how we did a splendid job getting back before sunset. Out of exhaustion and some pure black magic working against us, my chef locked the car key in the trunk. The doors were unlocked so we had access to the inside of the car, but these goddamn convertibles just didn't have a button that could release the trunk lock. We stood there for some time, helpless and clueless, while good people passed by offering opinions as to how to open the trunk. None of them worked. And the mosquito bites on me were adding up at an alarming speed. Miraculously we didn't yell at each other. I guess we were beyond exhaustion to do that. We decided this was the time to call in cavalry, but the problem was, ah-ha, the cell phone was in the trunk! So I geared into the Shameless mode, and approached a couple to borrow their cell phone. This couple of good Samaritans offered not just their cell phone but the car rental phone number and a ride to a bigger town on their way back. We were dropped off at Hanalei, with the mission to call the car rental road assistance again on a phone which they could get back to us. So there we went again, barging into a restaurant and asking the owner if we could borrow her phone if we dined there. She graciously agreed. An hour or two later, the locksmith showed up like an angel. He drove us back to that deserted end of road and popped the trunk through some device hidden in the panel on the passenger side.
Along with the locksmith went some $130, refundable by the car rental. Honestly I didn't care anymore. I just felt like kneeling down and kissing the locksmith's feet when I heard the most wonderful music of "click". And guess what would be our next challenge. Get the hell back and take a shower. You got that right.
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