Waimano Falls

So a while ago, a friend of mine suggested we make bucket lists. Now I am not one for coming up with radical things to do before I die, but I do have very little self motivation unless I have something requiring me to do it. Leading me back to making my bucket list. One of the things I included was hiking at least once every 2 weeks. I needed to take better advantage of this beautiful state I am living in, and I wasn't going to let not having a buddy stop me from exploring any longer!

Fortunately, Memorial Day weekend came around and provided many opportunities for hikes; with other people!!!! My friend Christina was visiting with her family and was interested in exploring a waterfall hike that wasn't touristy. She had been going to school in Hilo the past year and already felt like she had the "typical" hawaiian experience. What better time for me to pull out my brand new Hiking Guide to Oahu by Stuart Ball to find something amazing to do. The only waterfall hikes I knew about were Manoa Falls and Maunawili, ranked #1 and #2 for touristy hikes. It was then that I came across the Waimano Falls, which was definitely qualified under not touristy, boasted of 2 waterfalls, including a pool you can jump into. I knew I had found the one.


The hike began like most hikes here in Hawaii do, at the end of a residential street. I always wonder about how the people in these neighborhoods feel about all the weekend hikers taking over their street parking every weekend. The trail is actually called the Manana Trail, managed by the State (Na Ala Hele) and begins easy enough. About 3/4 in is when you reach Cardiac Hill, said to be the misery of all those on their return trip. Psh, forget coming up it, downhill is where it takes forever! I, being the clumsy individual that I am, focused hard on making sure my foot found roots rather than the bare soil that I could already imagine my tumbling down should I become unbalanced (see previous post about near death experience). Finally, after an eternity of side stepping down the mountain, we turned the corner to see...MORE MUD AND STEEP HILLS! YAYYY! The path split and we followed the pink (or yellow or orange) ribbons to ensure we were on the correct path. There was some bouldering, swinging from trees, ducking branches, before we hit a clearing and could hear people laughing up stream.

Once we arrived at the waterfall, we found it to be a trickle, but people were still jumping off into the water. There was a rope hanging from across the waterfall, and another rope to use to climb up to the jumping point. It took me a while to convince myself it was worth giving a shot. My hesitation had to do with my last waterfall jumping experience (once again resulting in me falling off the waterfall) and leptospirosis, an illness found in Hawaii's waterways known to be fatal. But once I shrugged those off, I still had to do a bit of rock climbing to get to the jumping off point. It was from there I could see the much higher waterfall that was behind the one with the pool. I carefully stepped myself over to the edge and jumped in, and immediately knew I was going to do it again. After a couple more times, I just sat back and watched some of the more daring military guys give it a shot. They were climbing out from the rope across the pool and doing backflips etc. Pretty good stuff.


 Then we saw that you could hike up to the top of the other waterfall. I imagined it would be a pretty interesting view so we gave it a shot and found ourselves looking down to where we just were, as well as catching a view of the valley. Not too shabby for a 3 mile hike. The trek back was not nearly as bad, as I have found that uphills suck way less than downhills. I powered up Cardiac hill like a beast and then ended the day as all good hiking trips should, with a trip to Waiolas. If you visit Hawaii and don't go to Waiolas, you're missing out. Hands down best shaved ice in Hawaii. It was a great hike and an awesome opportunity to spend time with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. Next day, Kaena
point...

Kauai on my Mind

So after a near death experience at work where I fell 5 yards and was extremely lucky that I was for the most part ok, it was off to Kauai for a work trip. If you remember back to January, I went to the Big Island for a Forest Stewardship Advisory Committee Meeting. Well we meet quarterly so this time it was off to Kauai. While I felt a little more comfortable about this one, as timing would have it, my boss who was running that meeting was out of town for the weeks before the meeting and the one in the office wasn't going to be able to go. Which meant I was doing a lot of prep for this meeting by myself. While I do appreciate the confidence my bosses have in me, I am human and did make a couple of mistakes. One was missing some documents we could have used at the meeting, the other being forgetting leaving a car at the airport for my boss. Ugh. I have to accept that I am still learning this job and am going to make mistakes and just learn from them, which is a bit hard for me.

Anyway, I stayed after the meeting and got a ride from Lihue to Waimea to stay with my friends. I arrived at my friend Christine's and my jaw dropped. She literally lives on the beach, with a cute pier right there. It was so nice that we had a couple of beers on the beach before we drove to her aunts house where they had a little garden. It was pretty much what I aspire to someday, some herbs, lettuce, papaya, bananas, sprouts, carrots, pretty much you could ever want, all in a little greenhouse and part of the property. They even had a little loi. We picked some eggplant, herbs, and lettuce to have for dinner before getting some local beef from the market. Once we got home, her bf cooked it all up and we had a delicious dinner just hanging out and talking the environment, travel, and good food. It was the kind of hanging out that I have missed since leaving college and was desperately in need of.

Next morning, I woke up to the sound of the ocean, and unfortunately, chickens! They are all over Kauai.  Our friend Tess came over and after gathering all we could for a day of adventure, we were off to the North Shore. I got to see a lot of Kauai on this drive since there is only one way to the North Shore because of the Na Pali coast which has no roads. We went through Lihue, which is where the airport is and is a small town, then you went through some touristy beach towns, the resorts, open ranch land, then finally the north shore. After some showdowns and a bit of luck, we snagged a coveted parking spot near the famous Na Pali trail. The trail is 11 miles and most people will only do small portions or camp part of the way. Today we were going to do the first 2 miles in to the beach and then hike out. It was pretty easy most of the way and followed the coastline allowing for some beautiful views of the mountains jutting out of the ocean. When we were almost to the beach, we passed a sign saying how many people had died getting caught in currents. We chose to ignore it since the currents were only bad in the winter and trekked down to the beach.

It was crowded with people because the hike isn't too hard in, but we found a nice spot tucked away next to the cliff and went in for a swim. I am always impressed with how clear the water is here. Its nice to look down and actually be able to see your feet. We played in the water and waited for the weather to improve so we could get out of the ocean and bask in the sun. Once it was sunny, we had lunch, caught up on fashion in our Elle and Marie Claires and studied native plants. Unfortunately, it was short lived since after a while, we felt the ominous water droplets. After a quick pic in the cave on the beach, we threw our backpacks on and began the hike back in the rain. We soon got out of the rain cloud and once again got to enjoy the sunshine and views, though if you looked behind us, it was pretty crazy seeing the grey cloud where we had just been.



Once we got done with the hike, we took up camp at the beach right at the bottom. It was a sheltered cove and had really smooth water so we just swam around and took naps in the sun. Next up, we found the wet cave where they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean 4. We had to hike up to the entrance and then down into this big dark cavern. The water that was inside the cave had all trickled down through the rocks. It was so quiet and dark down there that it took Christine and I some time to convince ourselves to go in the water. It was cold at first, but in a refreshing way. Apparently theres a cavern you can swim to called the blue room, but after hearing some weird noises our waves caused, we just stayed in the main place. Especially after Tess said "this is how every horror film starts." After that, we quickly took off to go to happy hour at Kalypso, where we downed mango daiquiris, coconut shrimp, nachos, and crab quesadillas. My incredible day came to an end at a pier near the airport, drinking beers and singing disney songs. Pure perfection.

Five down, Three to go

Thats right, this island hopper got to count one more island off on my island hopping adventures. But first,  my birthday. So I started off my week with Earth Day events last weekend and unfortunately had my Monday birthday over shadowed by Mother Earth. I guess if I was going to be over shadowed by a holiday, Earth Day was acceptable. So because I worked last weekend and my birthday was on a Monday, I didn't really have time to do anything to celebrate. Plus one of my bosses is out of town, so taking a day off wasn't really an option. I think the only true birthday celebration that occurred on my actual bday, was getting 25% off on lululemon pants I've been wanting at my yoga studio. But such is life as a full time worker.

But back to Kauai. Wednesday morning involved a 4am wake up time, which I despise. And due to unknown circumstances, I managed to not fall asleep till midnight. As we flew in, the first thing I noticed was the way the mountains just jut straight up on the coastline. No gentle slopes or flat beaches for tourist to overrun. The topography was so vastly different from Oahu that I could finally understand how Kauai is just a bit calmer than Oahu. Next thing I noticed, the damn chickens. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! Seriously, no one could go hungry on Kauai because if they needed protein, all they had to do was go outside and catch a chicken.

First up on the site visit schedule was the National Tropical Botanical Garden. It was an incredible property, filling up an entire valley and starting with a very nice LEED gold building. They went through their plans of how they would like to develop the site to be a sort of plant tourist attraction. They hope to have sections for their canoe trees, agroforestry, traditional plants, medicinal plants, pretty much a great botanical teaching garden. Our role in all this was to see if there was anyway their goals would align with one of our programs so that we could help them plants some trees. They could possibly qualify for the programs but after discussing the different things we could help with, it didn't necessarily seem like they matched what we could provide. Either way, I am excited to go back in the future and see how they achieved all that they planned.

The next two sites were also not the best fits, since one floods every year and would inevitably wash out the fence we are required to put in and the other being a wetland, which we can work on the outskirts but not actually in the wetland. I think a lot of discussion was about how most of the sites on Kauai aren't going to fit the programs as well as some of the other islands. But that is one of the things that makes working in Hawaii unique. That despite being in one state, the circumstances can be very broad. And finding different ways to help people means that we will always have to think outside of the box.

Once I got back, I attempted to celebrate my birthday in other activities. Art after Dark, an event put on at the Academy of the Arts was up first. I was super bummed that I didn't bother to look up the theme before going because it was Heroes and Villains and I totally would have loved to bust out my Violet from the Incredibles costume. I would have definitely won the costume contest. But either way, My friend Kristen and I had a great time making a superhero flip book and pictures while wandering around the museum. Its such a great monthly event bringing out all different types of people in Honolulu. And whats best, its free with my Academy of Art membership.

My last "birthday celebration" was really just Cinco de Mayo which I went on a great hike to Mariners Ridge in Hawaii Kai which I will definitely be going back to do some trail running, and then to Kailua to hang out with my friend Shealin and her Great Dane, Grateful. It was one of those overall nice day where I truly took advantage of living in Hawaii.

Love your Mother Earth

In case y'all didn't know, April 22 is Earth day. I think the fact that its a day before my birthday combined with my love for Pocahontas at a young age should have hinted at the fact that I wanted to be an environmentalist. Anyway, because Mother Earth is far to large to have only one day, I have worked the last two weekends at Earth Day events. I think these events are incredible opportunities to teach kids about our environment. It always amazes me how excited they get about what we are showing or teaching them, and also how much they already know. First up was the Mauka to Makai (Mountains to Ocean) day at the Waikiki Aquarium.

The Mauka to Makai day wasn't something I would normally work on in my office, mostly because I work in the forestry section and we have three interns who work strictly for education and outreach. But because we were short people, I volunteered. Anything to get more hours that don't involve me typing away on a computer right? Man, was I glad I agreed to do this. First of all, its at the Aquarium, which despite being rather small (especially when compared with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach) was one of my favorite activities to do when we used to visit Hawaii. Its right on the beach and has cool touch tanks, a monk

seal, and a ton of tropical fish to see. But the real reason this event was awesome, was that I met Wyland. Even if the name doesn't seem familiar to you, trust me, you have seen his work. You know the whale tale license plates? Ya that's him. Pretty much anytime you see an incredible mural showing ocean life, it will be Wyland. Long Beachers, he did the whale mural you see near the pike on the Long Beach Arena. Basically when everyone else had Lisa Frank folders in elementary school, I had Wyland. He is a friend of our outreach and education coordinator and was there promoting the water pledge (I'll put more info below). And I was working at his booth handing out signed posters and he just walked over and said, "Hi, I'm Wyland, nice to meet you" all very casual. Meanwhile, the fan girl inside of me was being repressed so I could keep my cool. It was really great to finally meet one of my art heroes. On a side note, my boss invited him to get drinks with us later, but he was already back on the North shore, but next time she has to go out to his house she said she's taking me with her. To see his studio would be beyond amazing. 

Next up on fun Earth Day events was working at the Marine Corp Base. This one was not one of my favorites, mostly because it seemed more like an event rather than focusing on the environment. There were three different tent areas and only one focused on the environment. The other tents had a lot of vendors selling things from green tea and fertilizer to Hotels and diving lessons. It was kinda fun because they let everyone shop in the Marine Mall, which is already cheaper than the regular prices, but on that day everything was 20% off. Unfortunately I didn't really need anything so I just stocked up on some of my favorite Clinique supplies. 

My last earth day event was at Sea life Park. This one I didn't really get invited to work, I just told everyone I was going. I used to really like going to Sea life park when I was younger but hadn't been in years so I was interested in checking it out. It was actually a really great event because there were a lot of cool groups tabling. It was being sponsored by Sustainable Coastlines that had over 650 volunteers clean the beach before heading over to the event. It was just very grassroots which made the hippie part of me very happy. Once the other

volunteer arrived, I got a chance to go explore. You really forget that when you're younger, everything seems much larger than when you are a grown up. It amazes me how small the park was, now that my legs were two times longer. The area I was really excited to see was where they used to have the dolphin show. Its a big arena and in the middle is an island. When I was younger I legitimately thought when I was a grown up, I was going to live on that island, with the pretty Hawaiian guy, our pet dolphins and the pirates across the way. What more could a girl ask for? Unfortunately it now appears that area is being used for dolphin encounters, which makes me think they were hurting on money. I personally am not a huge dolphin encounter fan, mostly because I find something kinda unsettling about putting on a life vest, walking into a shallow pool and then making these dolphins pretend to kiss me for a picture. It made me that much more appreciative of the wild dolphin swim I got to do in New Zealand. 

The other issue all this marine park brought up was the issues regarding animals in captivity. If you've seen The Cove you would know why I would be uncomfortable. Its a documentary showing the dolphin harvesting in Japan for the use of dolphin shows across the world. I would recommend it to everyone, but you will be disturbed and need a box of tissues. These types of places and zoos always make me think about the issues of education and study compared with confining wild animals to small habitats and their constant exposure to humans. I think its great that kids get an opportunity to learn and be inspired by these animals so that later in life they may want to be wildlife biologists or marine biologists. But on the other hand, it can't be good to keep them in such small spaces. I think I have reached the understanding that I am ok with animals that were born in captivity staying in captivity but definitely not with taking wild things and caging them. Also, I think that the San Diego Wildlife Park is a better direction to go than zoos. They have bigger enclosures and they usually get to be on their natural surface (grass, dirt) over concrete. Anyway, just some of my thoughts. 

Lastly, if you are interested in pledging for better water conservation, go check out http://www.mywaterpledge.com/

Up next, Kauai and Birthday!

Lots and lots of wood

So despite last week and this week only being 4 work days, I still found myself to be very busy. This week began with my cousin's Eagle Scout Ceremony which was really awesome. It was pretty cool of him because his Dad had been an Eagle Scout and it was interesting for me because my Dad had been one too. I think Boy Scouts in Hawaii must be awesome with all the perfect locations for camping and hiking. Really, the outdoors activities were pretty much the only reason I ever did Girl Scouts, and for the cookies.

Then right after I darted off to a "work event" which was more fun than work. It was the opening of the Hawaii Wood Show and while pretty much everyone there either worked in forestry or used forest products, there were a lot of familiar faces. It was nice to see people all gussied up though. The pieces were absolutely amazing. I wish I was loaded so I could buy each and every one of them. There were categories for furniture, turnings, sculpture, musical instrument, open, and novice. I had two favorites, this fern bowl because I absolutely love ferns and the yin yang concept was really well executed. And this table was just ingenious because it truly looked like it was fabric. Even the wood on the top of the table simulated wrinkles. It made me believe that the artists probably get inspired from the wood rather than having an idea and then just picking a piece to use.

The next day included my first all women's soccer game since I played back in NZ, almost 2 years ago. It was pretty great because it gave me time to work on some skills that I wouldn't normally get to do in my coed games. I also learned that polynesian girls, not so easy to "body" off the ball. There was one girl that I went for it and all I pretty much did was bounce completely off her; she was like a stone wall. Not trying that again. In the end we won, which was incredible since I guess this team hasn't won in over a year. So hopefully we can repeat that tomorrow.

Young sandalwood 

Monday I got to sleep in, but then quickly had to pack for a 2 day trip to the Big Island. Recently theres been a big "to do" about Sandalwood, called 'Iliahi in Hawaiian. There was a bill recently introduced to help us monitor the export of Sandalwood out of Hawaii. Hawaii used to be known for a large amount of Sandalwood but it was harvested unsustainable in the 1800's and is now considered a rare species here. We even have a few endemic species to Hawaii. There are only two exporters of Sandalwood in Hawaii and one of them invited us to look at his property and the entire sandalwood production. Once up there, it was hard to believe this tree is considered rare. There were seedlings growing everywhere! Sandalwood has the ability to do copiccing, which means that it can resprout from the roots of a dead tree. This is how most of their sandalwood was growing, and therefore, didn't need a host plant (they are hemi-parasitic). We spent all day off roading around this property and looking all the sandalwood in these little blue tubes. We also got to see theprocessing site and the smell of the Sandalwood was overwhelming. Overall, it was very educational and another interesting component of this sandalwood debacle.

Sandalwood Root balls. Fun fact, the ones with stones stuck in them,
like the one on the left are called pearls and are worth more because
artists like to use them in furniture or art pieces. 

In other news, my friend Sam recently bought a website for our NZ girls to do bucket lists and then blog about our adventures in our various cities. It may have some overlap with this blog but will most likely include non work activities. I will let you guys know when its up and running!

GIS conference and Holomua

So I managed to survive my first conference as a speaker. And with all things that you are nervous about, it went so quickly that I don't even remember much of what I said. I just looked at my screen and told people exactly how to make my map. And if you would like to see what all the hoopla was about, heres my map below.


View Larger Map
If you click on the colored dots you can see all the data about the trees!

I am so grateful that I was encouraged to speak at this conference. It was such a good learning experience and allowed me to take a big step forward in my career. From here, I can only improve and find myself ahead of the curve in the future.

Once I managed to survive that my week went straight into preparing for Holomua. My hula halau has been participating in Merrie Monarch, the biggest hula competition in the world, for over 30 years. Holomua is when the group performing at Merrie Monarch gets to do a trial run and get out any jitters before performing next month. My kumu (teacher) is the main Kumu's daughter and so we got to perform one song at the show. I was so excited to be back performing, but was unprepared for how much work needed to go into the preparation. We had extra rehearsals, one of which was in front of Aunty Mapu, the matriarch of our halau. Thankfully, she just told us to keep smiling and we would be ok. Then there was creating our skirt for the show. This halau is fantastic because we have workshops every month to learn how to make something for our hula. This month was learning to make ti leaf lei and the month before was making ti leaf skirt. But I have to tell you, combing the neighborhood for ti leaves that are long enough for a skirt and flawless can be a lot of work, plus making the skirt, then stripping it to small pieces, I think I was busier preparing for this show then I was at my full time job!

My costume!
But once the show arrived, it was completely worth it. It was amazing to be performing again and just be up there under the lights with all my hula sisters. It was also fantastic to know that I had the privilege to perform a song that was once performed at Merrie Monarch. I can't wait until the Kamehameha Competition in the summer!

Outside of the theater

The stage I performed on

Fighting the Lorax and planting some trees

This week has been a whirlwind. I guess you can expect that from a week containing leap day. I began the week fighting the Lorax. Yes, you read that correctly, this environmental lady had to go against the famous environmentalist Dr. Seuss book. My boss came in on Monday morning, shocked by the fact that IHOP was giving out Lorax bookmarks with seeds in them. Thus, my next steps involved finding out what type of seeds they were and if they were being released at the local IHOPs. Turns out they were Blue Spruce and Canadian pine, definitely not welcome trees in our great state. And that they were giving them out in Hawaii. This resulted in contacting our invasive weeds group and having them take the next steps of contacting IHOP and saying while we appreciate your attempt to have more trees planted and advertise this environmental movie, we do not want those seeds in Hawaii. Then the conversation spread to the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and pretty much any where not in the continental US that had an IHOP on how to shut this down. Turns out so far, all the IHOP restaurants agreed to not pass them out anymore.

But this isn't over, rather than making IHOP feel terrible about this, we wanted to create a teaching moment. We LOVE the Lorax in our office, so much so that its everyones first assignment upon arrival as a new employee to read the book (it sits in my cubicle bookshelf), so we wanted to use the movie's momentum to do some good. I think what will happen next is, we hope to create new lorax bookmarks and attach Ohia seeds (which have blossoms that do look like truffala trees) and carry this on till Earth Day next month. I predict some time in the next weeks I will find myself stapling ohia seed baggies to bookmarks...

So after that insanity, I needed to get out of the office and a fantastic opportunity to dart off for a day of out planting at Paohole Natural Area Reserve (NAR) appeared. After a long drive through the Hawaiian countryside (yes it exists) we got to the NAR and assembled our team. I was really excited because there were 4 other KUPU interns so it was fun to get to hang out with some of my friends. We gathered our tools and hiked 45 minutes in and got to the site. Fortunately they had already dug the holes, and all our plants and larger items were getting helicoptered in. Seeing that helicopter with a giant box hanging down full of plants was a new site and just crazy that thats the only option in a place like Hawaii with such steep cliff areas. We spent the day planting trees, building a catchment system and taking in the view which was awesome. Overall it was a great day to go out and enjoy some sunshine, do some manual labor, and basically avoid all the other things I had to do back at the office.

Once I had to return to reality, it was time for me to do my office presentation of my talk I'm doing at a GIS conference on Monday. I am presenting how I used ArcGIS online to map our Big Trees. Basically I am doing a tutorial in front of experts, for 20 minutes. To say that I am terrified would be an understatement. I will be spending my weekend memorizing my slides and trying to completely eliminate the words "um" "soooo" "ya" "like" and "things" from my vocabulary. Not likely. But I guess we will see how Monday goes. Thankfully after that, I will be able to relax a little, before I have to start on my next two assignments, sleuthing on the underground black market cost of Hawaii Sandalwood, and researching how to change the USDA Farm Bill, a process usually requiring far more time than I have. Guess I can only keep charging forward and attempting to do my best!