The Silver Lining of Minor Catastrophes

The Silver Lining of Minor Catastrophes

I’ve noticed a funny thing about myself.  I don’t particularly enjoy the stress of unplanned disasters. Who, besides Satan, and maybe God on a real sneaky day, would relish in the unwanted loss, emotional turmoil and stress of catastrophic events?

Not me. Not you, I would presume.

But, I have noticed that recently I’ve become more welcoming of life’s little disasters - the wrong turn into the seedy part of a town on vacation in Mexico, the accidental purchase of train tickets to the wrong destination, the inadvertent misspeak in a foreign language communicating something you clearly do not mean to say, the tripping and falling while walking down the aisle at your best friend’s wedding- these are all things you spend hours, days, even weeks preparing not to have happen. And yet some of my most beloved memories, and by far greatest stories, have been the result of these minor disasters.

Here’s an example:
(Cue dream-like harp sounds indicating an intro to a distant memory)

My friend Jenna and I decided to go on a girl’s vacation to Maui one summer. We were at a time in our lives where we were all about “traveling where the road takes us” and “flying by the seat of our pants”. Perhaps it was because 30 was looming closer and closer and we desperately wanted to recapture the freedom of our youth. It could’ve also been because we were easily swayed by the research we had done on various expeditions to Maui, one of which, “Traveling the Hana Highway”, was very adamant about not over planning anything and “enjoying the journey”.

Jenna and myself on our first day in Maui

With that mantra in mind we set out, purposefully bringing as little as we could and throwing caution, and our map, to the wind. (We actually couldn’t bring ourselves to throw the map out – as “free and wild” as we were, it still induced a sense of panic thinking about going completely map-less). We were mostly relying on our little Hana Highway article I had found in some magazine.

It listed the different mile markers and things you can find at each one. And, again, it stressed that the mile markers were all just a suggestion and that really, each person is destined to their own journey and shouldn’t try to take too much control over where the adventure takes you.  Somewhere along the route we managed to overlook that the Hana Highway didn’t begin until we got on Route 360 and that is where the suggested mile marker destinations were. So, as we traveled on the road that was NOT the actual Hana Highway we began looking for the different points of interest that were supposed to be at each mile marker. Each one that we passed did not seem to live up to its description. The entrance to the beautiful Twin Falls waterfall just past mile marker 2 looked more like a private driveway. It was, in fact. And there was no cute little fruit stand like they kept mentioning. Maybe it closed? Next stop looked like a dead end and, yes, it ended up being just that.

Onward!

What the heck, we kept thinking.
This Hana Highway is bullshit.
They seriously need to work on their park system. This guide book needs an update as well.

We decided to forgo the other little stops and just make it to the famous Black Sand Beach which was a State Park so it should be pretty easy to access and nice. We get to the mile marker of the Black Sand Beach, just past mile 32, and see one other car parked in what looks like a ditch off the side of a dirt road. The description read that parking is limited so this made sense, we guessed. The guide book then says to walk down a path and you would eventually get to the beach but you’d have a bit of a hike.

Ok! We thought. On with the journey.

Our rental, Sexy Flexy

Actual Black Sand Beach

Armed with backpacks filled with towels, sunscreen, water and dressed in little else than our beach bikinis (we are in Maui, duh!) we head down the dirt road in the direction of the beach that we see way off in the distance.

I’d like to add here that Maui is, in fact, an island. Shocking, I know. So, if you are in an elevated area of the island it’s very easy to see lots of blue and it often looks like it is just a hop, skip and jump away.

This is not so.
It is an optical illusion, kind of like a mirage in the desert.
Just something to keep in mind…

As we walk along the path to the beach (it’s actually a dirt road) we see all sorts of trash and gross stuff along the way. Clearly they do not keep up with their state parks here! There is this black, plastic tarp looking stuff on the road and on either side all we see is tall grass and junk. We pass by an old junky car that has been dumped in the tall grass. We see old rusty cans peeking out of the mass of green. But it looks like the beach is not too far…seriously, we are almost there.

So we keep walking.

We suddenly hear a truck come barreling down the road. Hey! They’re going to the beach too! This gives us the reassurance that we are not crazy people so we continue one. The truck heads down the road so far that it becomes out of sight. About 30 minutes later (yes, by this time we had been walking for about an hour and a half) the truck comes zooming up the path towards us then passes right by, giving us kind of a weird, creepy look. Suddenly things start to become weird. Did they literally just stay for only 20 minutes at the beach? Why didn’t they look happier? Why were they looking at us so oddly? And why isn’t anyone else hiking in their bathing suits down to the famous Black Sand Beach?

All these whys eventually led us to conclude that maybe this was not going to take us to a Black Sand Beach and even if it did, we had been hiking way too long already and couldn’t waste any more time. Plus, the whole ambiance of this “State Park” felt so icky. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it felt like someone may have been murdered there or that gross things inhabited this place. So we turned around and hiked the hour and a half back to the car.

We felt so defeated. We did not feel free and liberated by our journey. And we had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps our guide book was wrong. We decided to go a little bit further before giving up completely. Suddenly we were making a turn on to another road, one actually called the Hana Highway, and the mile markers started back over at 0. Lightbulbs started going off, but it wasn’t until we reached Mile Marker 2 and then saw a cute little fruit stand and a huge sign saying “Twin Falls” that it all made sense. And it wasn’t one of those times where it all makes sense and you are so relieved, like “Phew! I’m so glad it all makes perfect sense now!” Nope. Not that kind of feeling. If we weren’t hiking to the black sand beach back there for 3 hours, where were we hiking? We parked the car and started to piece things together. Through a bit of investigation and asking a few locals at the fruit stand, we discovered that we had actually spent the great majority of our day there in Maui trekking through the landfill. Which explains the trash, the tarp, the dirt road, the truck (dropping off its load of trash!) and the lack of anything beach-like, plus the general feeling of ickiness. How silly we felt, knowing now what we must have looked like hiking in our bikinis through a landfill.

We finally got to that Black Sand Beach, but not in the same day. We returned back to our hotel and started out the very next day on our carefree and blissful Hana Highway journey, armed with a bit more knowledge this time and a GREAT story to tell. Clearly we have no sense of shame or embarrassment and, though I was pissed at the time, having lost a whole day of sightseeing and beach going, in retrospect it is the funniest memory and we laugh so hard we nearly pee our pants every time we talk about that day.


So, as you can see, minor disasters such as accidentally spending a whole day trekking through a landfill while on vacation in Maui, can be a good thing in that you will have a great story to tell and it will put a smile on your face, and maybe even give you a little chuckle, every time you think back on it.

Me, laughing at our stupidity...