Hiking the Kalalau Trail – Day 3: No Way Out

This is day 3 of hiking the Kalalau Trail. We got our tents all packed up and ready to go. We head over to Max’s shelter and waited for the boat to arrive. After waiting for two hours, the boat didn’t show up. We ask Max if it’s actually going to come and he tells us, “there is nothing for sure in this beach.”

We came to the conclusion that there is no boat that comes and picks people up. It was simply false hope. There is only one way out and that is to hike through the entire trail once again.

We all felt discouraged at this point. We were tired and still weak from the previous two day of hiking. On top of that, we were low on food. We actually did not have enough food for the next day. One bad thing lead to another, our stove ran out of gas and we barely had enough fire to cook our remaining packaged food.

We relocated camp on higher grounds on this day. We were fed up with the sand mites having a buffet on our legs.

Setting up our new camp

Our new camp

 

Our new camp has a nicer shade and feels more comfortable than the beach. There are also no sand mites which definitely helped our situation; however, there is quite a lot of mosquitoes. We manage to partially fend them off by setting up some mosquito repellent incense around our camp site.

At this point our morale was low. We each had two bars and one pack of food to share among the four of us. Things are looking hopeless at this point. We also began fighting as a result of hunger.

We started speaking with other campers about finding food in the area. Turns out you can survive by eating guavas, passion fruit and strange grape looking fruits. My sister Sharleen decided to go forage for some fruits that we can eat for the next day’s journey back.

I lay down inside my tent alongside a grumpy Karen. I was brainstorming of ways we can get some food to prepare us for tomorrow’s big hike back. That’s when I suddenly thought of a solution! What if….I bought food from the other campers?

I then asked Karen if she had any money on her. Turns out she has $20.

I took her money and asked the friendly gay couple that is camping right beside us if we could buy some food from them. They looked at each other, then at me, and said “We’ll do an inventory and get back to you.”

A Renewed Hope

My sister Sharleen came back and she brought back a bunch of guava’s, passion fruit and the strange grape looking fruit. We are now stocked up on fruits for tomorrow’s journey. On top of that, Sharleen also brought some sauteed noni leaves that Max was cooking.

At that exact same time, the couple right beside us gave us four packages of food and four bars, enough for us to eat dinner and some for breakfast tomorrow. We were saved! We gratefully thanked the couple and tried giving them the money. They refused. We have never felt so much gratitude for the kindness we received. There is definitely good people all over the world.

We were also low on water filter. Another neighboring camper lent us his water filter and stove to help us stock up our water supply and cook our food.

 

Filtering some water

The scary looking guy with the machete also came by and gave us some packets of oatmeal. Turns out he was a good guy after all! You really can’t judge people by their appearance!

We celebrated that night by having a feast. We invited other campers to join us as we had our last meal before our journey tomorrow.

Cooking dinner

We came up with a plan to approach our hike the next day. We were going to split up into two groups. My sister Eunice will hike with Karen since they are both fast hikers. I just wanted to make sure Karen is safe and I know Eunice can get her out of there quick. Sharleen and myself will be hiking together because we are both slow hikers.

We also decided to give away a lot of the stuff we brought to help lighten our backpacks.

After our feast, we said our goodbyes to other fellow campers and drifted to sleep getting ready for the big hike the next day.

Next up, day 4: Stormy Hike.