The Hawaii Trip

 In the August of 2023, my wife and I flew to Los Angelas to join other members of my wife’s family to board a Prince Cruise into the Pacific Ocean with the final destination of the Hawaiian Islands.  

There were 10 of us; the youngest was in the 60’s and the oldest in the mid 80’s. We were not in the prime age; most of us have chronicle health conditions. 

It tooks us approximately 7 days to reach the Big Island of the Hawaii.  

There are approximately 1000 islands, large and small.  But there are only 5 major islands, Kauai, Oahu, Malokai, Maui, and the Big Islands.  Kauai is the oldest which is approximately 5 million years old; The Big Island is the youngest which is approximately 0,7 million years old. Kauai is situated at Northwest of the Big Island. 

Hawaiian Islands are formed from the volcano created from a moving Pacific tectonic plate passing through a magna, a hot spot of Earth crust. The Pacific tectonic plate is moving in the  northwest direction with a speed of approximately 100 mm per year.  Just like a moving cake passing through a hot candle, the cake melt at the hot spot.  If the pressure is high enough, it erupts just like volcano.

The volcano creates mountain summit and deep base. Mauna Loa has an elevation of 13,679’ .  The trade wind and the summit height host 4 out of 5 climate groups.  Hilo is the wettest city on the Earth.  Aka Fall has rainfall almost every day.  They belong to the Tropical Continuous Wet zone.  However, coastal areas especially the south and west sides of the summit slides are dry year-long.  Example is the Mauna Loa Resort.  At the summit top, such as summit of Mauna Loe, occasionally, there are also snow falls. 

Hawaii is a dynamic living entity.  It is a place where work of wind and water, the rise and fall of the land; sun and long dances of time creates not just an island of culture and people but various climate zones between light and shadow, fire and ice, as well as rain and dry. 

Some of us hired a tourist guide on the Big Island. He took us to the summit to visit the Volcano National Park.  Although it was August, it was actually very cold at the summit.  At the summit, the guide introduced us to the Hawaiian state tree, the Ohia-Lehua which has a twisted tree trunk but a beautiful red flower on top of the tree trunk. 

It was not supposed to be the blossom season of the tree; however, one the tree had a beautiful red flower on the tree trunk. 

Being curious, I came close trying to smell the fragrance of the flower, accidentally the flower came off.  Here, the trouble began as the tree and the flower were created by the greatest Volcano goddess, Pele, of Hawaii. The legend says that the Pele was once in love with a young, strong and handsome man, called Ohia and made a proposal to Ohia to marry him.  Ohia turned down the proposal because Ohia agreed to marry his sweet heart, Lehua.  Furious Pele chased this couple to kill the couple and burned everything on her path.  

Many other god and goddess asked Pele for mercy. Pele agreed and  turned this couple into a tree and a flower on top of the tree.  The tree and the flower are inseparable; thus anyone trying to separate the couple would bring the misfortune.  

Now, I had accidentally picked the flower.  So what had misfortunes happened to us ? 

It had many.  Two days later after the incidence, the youngest member of our group had a Covid.  Although Covid did not kill her or even made her very sick, she was locked in her cabin for the rest of the journey. She could not enjoy the show, the line dance, the Hawaiian dance, even watched the sunrise or the sunset of the Pacific Ocean. 

On the day we were disembarking from the ship, my sister’s husband who has severe Type II diabetics and requires daily insulin injection had a racing heart and was out of breath during the disbarking process.  He had to be sent to the ER for emergency treatment.  He was OK.  

When I arrived home, I was worried about bad luck or misfortunes that could happen to me. Miraculously, I am OK so far.  Do you know what I did ? 

I paint the Ohia-Lehua tree on a piece of paper with a black pen and a red pen. I sketched the most ugly, twisted tree then on top of he tree, I sketched  red flowers.  Somehow, this effort of repairing the curse seems to work.  

Then it comes to the final question.  When the members of our group were sick, were they the results of the curse? Or, there were frail in the first place ?