We rented a Jeep and went on a Safari around the island. Lanai is the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands with 141 square miles from the cool and misty uplands of Lanai City, where most of the residents live, to the sunny warms beaches that ring the 47 miles of coastline. The island is 95% private property, and the owner allows limited access along a few dirt tracks. A four wheel drive vehicle is definitely a necessity on these routes.
We started our adventure from our resort the Koele Lodge and followed this red road following our map to the Garden of the Gods and Polihua Beach. We were excited to get out and see what the rest of the island had to offer.
Apparently there is a myriad of wildlife on the island except for bears. They have more Asian Axis deer on Lanai than people. We were just driving down this road like the one above and three of them darted right out in front of our jeep. Thankfully Martin had time to stop but that was the only time we saw any deer or any other wildlife. The other big game mammal is Mouflon, which are Big Horn sheep that had been introduced to the island. We didn't see any of these.
There was a lot of low lying trees and brush with the occasional large Cook Pine mixed in.
We are about to enter Keahi A Kawelo (Garden of the Gods) a unique collection of rock formations. This is a beautiful and amazing place so we took a lot of pictures.
We could see the island of Molokai in the distance.
It's kinda like you're on another planet and there is no one around so it seems very isolated.
Some of the places here looked remarkably like the photos from the Mars rovers!
Here is our Jeep, it's the Cadillac version as the others were already rented.
It feels like we're on another planet like the moon!
We came out of the Garden of the Gods and down to Polihua Beach, the northwestern point on Lanai. This is the place where the green sea turtles used to lay their eggs. Lately they seem to have moved to the Northern Hawaiian Islands which are uninhabited.
There can be very strong currents here nicknamed "The Tahitian Express". Swimming can be very dangerous so we did not swim there. There was just a handful of people down the beach in the other direction so we had this whole beach area to ourselves. Another 'running freely on the beach episode' or just sitting on some rocks.
It was so quiet and peaceful here and the sandy beach is gorgeous. You can see Molokai just getting 'smoked' by the storm that we had the night before.
Those are our footprints above Martin. We could see no one.
This little bird was so cute. His buddy is not in the picture but the two of them would run like mad between the waves coming up the shoreline and pick through the sand. They were really fast with their little legs, it was comical. I did get a good video of them and it's so funny.
This is the view from the beach showing the countryside hill that we had to drive down to get to the beach. The picture below is the road back up the hill. As you can see these are one way roads so we would have to pull over if another Jeep came the other way.
Coming back through the Garden of the Gods again so we stopped to take more pictures.
We have left the Garden of the Gods so now were back in a more lush green landscape.
The white buildings above are right beside the Koehle Lodge located just beneath the mountains. It's cloudy over the mountains and clear and sunny down in Manele Bay. We have to come back this way to pick up the road for our next adventure to Kaiolohia (Shipwreck Beach).
Now we're on a paved road that descends down the North side of the mountain toward the coast line. The view is so gorgeous with all the green landscape.
When we got to the beach area we had to park our Jeep and take a short hike along the shore to get a closer look. We did find a cement foundation for a light house which used to stand there. It was a great spot to take a shot of the rusty liberty ship. After the second World War, the Navy attempted to sink this ship in the Kalohi Channel. It refused to cooperate and came to rest on the reef.
During our hike we did find the petroglyphs they had mentioned. We found quite a few of these Ancient Hawaiian rock drawings at the site.
These petroglyphs are in fact very faint. They are much more obvious in the photographs, and some of the people who came through after us didn't see them even though they were looking for them!
We made it down to the beach in front of the ship. The strong trade winds come down the Au'au channel between Maui and Molokai, and hit the island at this point.
At first we though these little mounds were made from crabs but they are too big so we're speculating they are from turtles!
It is a much dryer landscape here as this side of Lana'i receives less than 10 inches of rain per year, much of that at one time, usually during January or February. We didn't get rain but it was cloudy and very comfortable temperature.
Martin is doing a 'me' acting like he's oblivious to the dead crab on his shoulder and freaking out when he turns to notice it like I did on one of our hikes one summer not realizing that this huge beetle was on my shoulder until Martin asked me to see what was there...you probably all know the story.
Funny boy! That crab shell was in perfect condition, he looked pretty real.
This is our last picture which is the road we took for our first adventure and it shows the landscape on this side of the mountain. We had a fun day trapsing around the island and gave you a different perpective to see what Lana'i is like. It's gorgeous here, a beautiful island that is so quiet where you can truly relax.
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