The Manoa Falls Trail

Books By Patti Liszkay
​Available On Amazon

​"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
​Available on Amazon.

​THE MANOA FALLS TRAIL

...Continued from yesterday:

      On Monday, April 11, Romaine, Stanley, Tom and I drove half an hour north of Honolulu to hike the Manoa Falls Trail located in the   tropical rainforested mountains of Koolau. 

     All the Hawaii hiking websites described the Manoa Falls Trail as an easy, kid-friendly, hike offering spectacularly beautiful views. Really more of a walk than a hike, they said, and only 1.6 miles round trip. You can do it in flip-flops they said.  
​      Turned out the websites were lying through their teeth about the flip-flops and also about this being an easy hike for kids, unless they were referring to little mountain goats. It certainly wasn't an easy hike for human adults. At least not this human adult. All right, this old human adult.
        However I had an inkling that this might be the case, as I recalled the time during Tom's and my 2015 trip to Kauai when we attempted to hike the Alaka'i Swamp trail, which the Hawaii guidebooks rated as "moderate."   
​      About 250 feet into the trail I, a veteran hiker of the 450-mile Spanish Camino de Santiago de Compostela, threw in the towel when faced with the steepest, most slippery and treacherous patch of rock I’d ever run into. (See https://www.ailantha.com/blog/two-hikers-in-search-of-a-trail).

      Hence I knew that a description of a Hawaiian mountain trail as "easy" might not necessarily be all that easy. So just to be on the safe side we eschewed flip-flops for hiking boots and Tom and I even brought along our hiking sticks.

       At the trail's entrance there was, among the information, safety warnings and interesting geographic and nature facts, this admonition:

     I did the chant for the protection of the goddess. As it turned out, I would need it.
​     But not at first. At the beginning the trail was fairly smooth. if somewhat muddy, and we were not far along before learning one thing that the websites were altogether truthful about: the views were indeed spectacularly beautiful.  

     Apparently Manoa Falls was a filming location for "Jurassic Park"  and also for the movie "Catching Fire." One definitely felt if as one could be in Jurassic Park.

      Then we came to the T-Rex.
      I'm not sure how far along the .8 mile trail we'd gone - maybe a quarter of the way, maybe a third - when the smooth, muddy path became a stony, muddy path,

...then morphed into a slippery upward slope of muddy monster rocks.

      It was difficult.  And, though it appeared that my mate and I were probably the oldest hikers on the trail, we certainly weren't the only ones who found themselves stopping to try and negotiate a path over and around the rocks. And we, at least, had hiking sticks to help us along.
      I felt sorry for all the people - most of them, in fact, probably due to the garden path they'd been led down by the websites - who were inadequately shod for the slick, rocky climb. 

      However, those of us who made it to the top of the mountain were rewarded with the sight of Manoa Falls.       

     Upon reaching the top some of us queued up for our turn for a photo op. 

     We saw a couple of people ignore the warning signs and jump the guard wall to climb down to the bottom of the falls,

       On our way back from the falls - this time a treacherous downhill trek - we crossed paths with a breathless young woman wearing a sundress and cute but muddy sandals dragging her way up the trail. 
       "Oh," she huffed, gesturing towards our walking sticks. "Are there any more of those sticks at the top?"
        I was truly sorry to have to tell her that there weren't.