Breakfast at Tiffany's

If you turn your back to the ocean, pretty much anywhere in the small town of Hana, and look up towards the mountains, you’ll see a large hill with a large wooden cross. Built probably when missionaries started coming to the islands, it’s a lovely spot, good for soaking in all that is Maui, reflecting, meditating, praying, whatever drawls to you this cross, but perhaps most used for witnessing incredible sunrises. Yesterday morning, Chelsea and I rose at 5:21 A.M. to be exact, ran the two miles into town by the light of my head lamp, and hiked up this hill to look east towards a rising sun. And indeed what a beautiful sunrise is was.

Walking up this hill, looking ahead at the cross and past towards those majestic mountains, it all looked very “Lost-ish”, I half expected to see some Others creeping out of the jungle….

On our way back, we stopped at Uncle Bill’s, a small road side all day breakfast vender, run by Phyllis, a Boston Projects bred woman, living in Hawaii for about ten years, with a whole lot of spunk, and no filter. Great fun to talk to, she shared all sorts of Hawaiian legends with us as she cooked our Loco Moco breakfast, enthusiastically popping out in her David apron (as in the Italian sculptor, David, if you can imagine). Phyllis told us of Pele, the Hawaiian Volcano Goddess, of superstitions like no whistling in the dark, always picking up a Hawaiian woman hitchhiking alone, and NEVER taking a rock from Hawaii as a souvenir.  Krista had already told us this, and apparently 9 tons of rocks get returned every year, as the people who took them, had horrible luck once they got home. Thinking of that Brady Bunch episode, anyone?

Intrigued to learn more Hawaiian superstitions, I went to the ever so reliable source of the internet. An interesting one that stuck out without a doubt, not taking bananas on a boat! It brings bad luck and means no fish will be caught…

The one story I loved the most that Phyllis told was about two halved flowers. There’s a small white flower that grows by the ocean. This small white flower however, only grows it’s small white petals on one half. Up towards the mountains, there’s a small white flower that only grows it’s small white petals on the opposite half as the one by the ocean. Years and years ago, when separate tribes scattered around the islands, a man and a woman from warring tries were not to marry. In a Romeo and Juliet, star crossed lovers story, two hearts connected in a romance that could not be, because of their families. They consulted with an elder in one of their tribes, and were told that the only way to be together was to kill themselves. So much in love, they did just that and became those small white flowers, one half living by the ocean, one half living by the mountains.

We’ll defiantly be returning to Uncle Bill’s.

Aloha.