Kaho'olawe

Ok, so I finally have some time to post my pictures from Kaho'olawe!  We caught a plane to Maui, and then a boat to Kaho'olawe.  Kaho'olawe Island Reserve Commission (KIRC) is awesome!  They took care of us well!

This is Kaho'olawe from the plane.  This island is a lot bigger than the map makes it seem to be.

Approching the shores of Kaho'olawe!  The ocean was so glassy!  It made our boat ride nice and smooth!

This is our boat, the Ohua!  There's no dock on the island, so the only way to get on and off the boat is to either drive up to the beach, or swim if the waves are big!  They also can drive the Polaris's onto the boat to load supplies.

This is what happens when the ocean is choppy, the wind is strong, and you are sitting on the port side of the boat on the ride back to Maui:  SOAKED!

Everyday, dolphins swim into the bay to rest!  They were doing flips and jumps too!  But, my only picture of them jumping is kind of blurry...

Kaho'olawe is mapped into grids that show how safe an area is.  The island was bombed for 50 years, but was only cleaned for 10 years, so there is still a lot of unexploded ordinance everywhere.  Red is bad, green is good, yellow is just OK because it's ony surface cleared.  Our base camp is located at the bay in the SW corner of the map, where the green line starts.

Welcome to base camp!  It used to be a military base.

These are our hale's!  Our bunks, the kitchen, and the cafeteria!

Ordinance display, check out the huge bombs behind the board!

This is on the top of the summit, Moa'ula.  This site was very sacret to the Hawaiians and was also used as a navigation studying point.  Lana'i, Moloka'i, Maui, and the Big Island can be seen from up there!

This is a ko'a, built to call rain to the island.  We came up here one morning to do the sunrise chant - it was AWESOME!!!!!! 

The sunrise over Haleakala, Maui:

Want to see the beaches?  They're unpopulated!  And there's a little point break too, although it wasn't going off while I was there!  :)

Wanna see some sunset pictures now?  :)  We also learned the sunset chant and the wind chant while we were there!  We learned so much culture and history!  Of course, we also did a lot of work: invasive species removal and erosion control.  (By the way, shovels, machetes, and pick-axes suck for removing the invasive Koa Haole, use loppers, a chain saw, and herbicide).

Kaho'olawe was an amazing experience, everyone should volunteer to help out, because the island is crying for restoration, with with KIRC, or the Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana (PKO).