Saturday, June 09, 2012

 

Santana Hawaii Tandem Tour

Stoker Kim and I participated in the Hawaii tour over St. Valentine's Day in February 2012.  The tour was organized by Bill and Jan McCready, owners of Santana Tandems.

Stoker Kim and I have previously taken three tours with Bill and Jan: The Black Forrest of Germany and Alsace, France; Tuscany, Italy; and the upper Danube River (Germany, Austria, the Slovakia and Hungary).  All were great tours but I decided to take more independent tandem vacations since then. 

The Santana tours are first-rate.  But they usually include a larger number of participants than I prefer and they are very structured.  I'm not complaining about that because most people want to do a lot of activities with their vacation time and I think Bill and Jan have decided to cater to the active tandem vacationer.  Each day is usually filled with biking, planned meals in special places and other assorted activities.

Personally, I decided that I prefer self-guided tours where a tour company sets us up with suggested routes, activities, and hotels and takes care of moving our luggage from place to place as we move along.  All of those things are suggestions instead of requirements and, with the exception of needing to get to the planned hotel along the route on the assigned day, we are on our own.  I have done successful self-guided tours in Burgundy, France and the Lakes Region of Italy and intend to do more touring this way.

But Stoker Kim saw the Hawaii tour on the Santana list and wanted to go.  Hawaii is my favorite place so it didn't take much convincing to get me to go.  But we knew the routine and pledged to do the activities we wanted to do and skip the activities that didn't appeal to us without regret or worry.

This tour started in Maui where we assembled bikes and took a short shake-down ride the first day followed by an evening catamaran dinner cruise.   Day two started early with a bus ride from our hotel at Kaanapali up Haleakala volcano to observe the sunrise after which we were reunited with our bicycles (trucked up to a meeting place) followed by the all down-hill ride to the town of Paia where we loaded the bikes into the truck and bussed back to the hotel.

Bill's pre-ride brief on the first day after assembling our bikes.  Bill and Jan are center in the photo.
Boarding the catamaran after our ride on the first day.
The view of Lahaina from our catamaran cruise.
Sunrise on Haleakala.

Stoker Kim ready to start our down-hill Haleakala ride.

Linda and Larry Black used a drag chute to help control their speed down Haleakala.  It actually worked.

The road down Haleakala.

Stoker Kim and I riding around Paia after our Haleakala down-hill.

Beautiful views are easy to find around Paia.
Day three started early with a short dawn ride from our Kaanapali hotel to the pier in Lahaina where we loaded bikes and people onto a boat for the crossing to the island of Lanai.  There we had choices of activities including hitting the beach or riding up the volcano that is Lanai and across the crater to Lanai City.  We were able to spend a couple of hours at the Four Seasons Resort beach on beautiful Manele Bay where I went for one of those wonderful ocean swims where I can see coral, fish and other objects of interest as I go along. After that I met up with Stoker Kim on the beach and she and Linda Black rode the bus up to the Koele Resort which lies on top of the volcano and across the crater where we had a mini-golf tournament and lunch.  Larry Black took over stoker duties on my tandem and we rode my Bruni tandem the short but steep (1,600-ft. of elevation gain) to the Koele Resort.
After lunch we re-paired up with our normal stokers and rode the almost-all-downhill route to the industrial harbor where we boarded the same boat for the crossing to Molokai.
Entering beautiful Manele Harbor on Lanai.

The climb up the dormant volcano that is Lanai.

Larry Black stoked for me up the volcano to Lanai City.  If I had known he was wroking so hard I would have down shifted.

I let Larry rest and check his email at a cafe in Lanai City as reward for doing such a great job getting us up the volcano.

Mini golf at the Koele Resort on Lanai.
A brief bit about Molokai:
Molokai is the most rural of the Hawaiian Islands.  It doesn't seem to have changed much since I first met Stoker Kim there in 1985.  My ship went there from Pearl Harbor for a family cruise just prior to leaving on a western Pacific deployment.  We gave ship tours and diving demonstrations at the harbor in Kaunakakai and almost all of the locals that I spoke with during our trip remembered the visit of the USS Reclaimer (ARS 42).  Since it was a family cruise it has always struck me as appropriate that I returned to Pearl Harbor with my future family (Stoker Kim).

Molokai will not be everyone's choice of vacation locations as it is very rural.  We landed at Kaunakakai, loaded the luggage onto a pick-up truck and biked the three-miles to the Hotel Molokai, the only hotel on the island.  Some major resort chains have built resorts on Molokai but they have all failed.  It seems to be too remote and the crowds don't go there which is just fine with the residents.

Hotel Molokai is comprised of these units.
The King's coconut grove on Molokai.

Sunrise at Hotel Molokai.

The next day the Santana plan was to ride to the Halawa Valley at the eastern-most point of the island and hike to the Moalua waterfall.  We knew that this wasn't going to work for us as Stoker Kim's knees wouldn't tolerate the hike.  Our plan was to leave with the group, ride as far as we wished and turn around.  We rode into a very stiff head-wind and I quickly began to feel fatigued from a combination of jet-lag, late nights spent working and the previous day's swim and strenuous biking on Lanai. 

We made it about 15-miles to Father Damien's lovely chapel, where we stopped with the group for some memorable photos, and on another mile or so a store and eatery.  We stopped there to get something to eat with the hope that it would provide me with some magic energy.  It didn't work and I broke the news to Stoker Kim that I was done for the day.  We returned to the hotel with the wind thankfully at our backs and took the rest of the day off to rest.  It was a good decision and I felt rejuvenated the following day.

Father Damien's church.
The statue of Father Damian at his church.
However, we didn't participate in the planned activities the following day either as the Santana plan was to ride up major hills to the mule barns at the Kalaupapa visitor's center.  There they mounted their steeds and rode down the steep sea cliffs to the Kalaupapa Leper Colony. 
Kalaupapa is a very historic and meaningful place and visiting there would be very worth the effort.  I get it.  But the mule ride didn't appeal to me so we invoked our pledge not to participate in activities just because they were on the schedule and developed our own plan for the day.  We slept late and then rode with new friends Dan and Patti Planker (Indiana) and Joe and Kathy Nehl (California) to a local in-land eatery followed by coffee and a trip to the Hoolehua post office where you decorate coconuts and mail them home for your friends to find in their post boxes in a few days.
The Hoolehua post office is not pretty but it is lots of fun (Photo from TripAdvisor since I didn't take one).

Our bikes waiting outside while we were decorating coconuts to send.

Our group after not riding mules down the sea clifs to Kalaupapa.  From left: Dan, Patti, me, Joe, Kathy and Stoker Kim.

This was Friday which, at the Hotel Molokai, means Aloha Friday.  About thirty local musicians (singers, ukuleles and guitars) come to the hotel and play, accompanied by impromptu hula dancers, for two hours for half-priced drinks and pupus.  Hundreds of locals turn out for Aloha Friday and it is special.  My guess is that there are very few places where this event could happen every week and Molokai is one of them.  It was fun to experience it.
Local musicians at Aloha Friday.

More local musicians at Aloha Friday.

Local hula dances, both male and female.

More local hula dancers.

That brings us to the final day of our tour.  The plan was for us to get up the next morning, disassemble and pack our bikes and then take the commercial ferry from Kaunakakai back to Lahaina.  We packed up after breakfast and had time for a kayak ride down the coast back to the hotel for lunch followed by the bus ride to Kaunakakai for the ferry ride back to Lahaina.

The ferry ride was the most disappointing aspect of the trip.  Not because it was so rough.  That happens.  But because Bill and Jan allowed the cases with our bikes to be loaded on the fantail portion of the ferry exposed to the elements.  And the element I am most concerned with was the ocean.  The aft portion of the ferry was awash for most of the trip due to the extremely rough seas and the bike cases were constantly being soaked by sea water.

By the time we got underway there wasn't anything I could do to help the situation.  Shortly after getting underway we got into the rough seas and Stoker Kim and I sought refuge in the comfortable padded passenger seats in the ferry's interior.  I went into my "anti-seasick Zen mode" where I get as comfortable as possible, close my eyes and think happy thoughts.  This technique was honed during many nasty days at sea.  Once implemented it takes a lot to make me seasick as long as I am not disturbed from this semi-vegetative state.

But, even being in my "zone" I could hear two major events happening around me: fellow passengers getting sick and other passengers talking about our bike cases being submerged in sea water.  There was no chance of moving the cases now as the decks and the passengers were heaving with equal frequency and intensity.   I had to ride it out and wait for that sweetest of times when a boat enters the harbor from rough waters.

Once safely back at Lahaina I went to the fantail to view the scene.  The area and the bike cases were soaked with sea water.  When I asked Bill and Jan why they allowed this to happen their responses made me feel as if I needed to reenter my Zen trance:

Jan: "There is nothing we could do.  What do you expect us to do?"
Bill: "Spray it down with WD 40."

Oy.  I’m talking here about bicycles, many of them sold by Bill and Jan, costing up to $20,000.  And that is the best you can do: a recommendation to spray them down with WD 40.  Sea water is fatal to expensive to bicycle parts and tubes and I was shocked at what I perceived to be cavalier responses to my concerns.

Once ashore we had to quickly unload the ferry because there were people waiting at the pier to foolishly take the return voyage into the gaping maw of hell that the Molokai Channel was that day.  I wished them luck as we hurried to get all of our luggage and bikes onto the pier where we loaded into a bus for the trip back to the Maui hotel or the airport for those who were departing that night.

I don't know the fate of my fellow traveler's bikes.  I was lucky as my bike was in two cases: one with the frame and the other holding the wheels.  Luckily the frame case was stored in a dry location in the interior of the ferry.  The wheel case was doing submarine duty on the fantail and the inside of the case was wet with sea water. 

But that wasn't too bad as wheels are much easier to clean than all of the nooks and crannies of the gears, cables, bearings and widgets associated with the frame.  I would be interested in hearing if others experienced problems with the salt water, especially the guy who had his bike packed in a cardboard shipping box.  I can't imagine that story had a happy ending, but please post a comment to this blog if you wish to provide us with that information.  I know that some of my fellow tourers feel that I was overly concerned about this situation and over reacted.  If so, you are welcomed to post a comment to express your thoughts.

My opinion can be summarized by responding to Jan's question:  "What do you expect us to do."  I’m glad you asked.  Jan, since you and Bill were in charge of the tour (and no one told us our equipment was going to be put at risk on this trip) here are some suggestions:
There are four things that you could have done.  Maybe the lack of concern for our bikes was due to this being the end of the tour.   Maybe Bill and Jan slipped slightly prematurely into a relaxed mode and were just along for the ride by this time.  But the tour wasn't over until we got back to the pier in Lahaina and I feel that you let me down. 

This is more disappointing because it was such a great trip and this one "aw crap" wipes out many "atta-boys" that were earned along the way.  It was a great trip except for the unfortunate ending.

Stoker Kim and I took the tour bus back to the hotel in Kaanapali where we spent the night and moved the following day to Mama's Fish House in Paia.  We had to move because the Kaanapali hotel, the Grand Hyatt, kicked us out since they got a better deal and cancelled our reservation.   Really.  I have never had that done to me before, but they did it. 

So, we lost a day of our vacation packing and moving the approximately 50-miles to Paia.   However, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Mama's Fish House was great and Paia, located at the base of Haleakala, was the perfect starting point for my single-bike ride from the sea to the summit which I chronicle in my next blog post.

Please feel free to comment especially if you participated in the tour and have a comment or opinion on the Molokai to Lahaina ferry crossing.  Especially the guy with the cardboard bike shipping box (no offense intended, I am bad with names).  How did that work out for you?
One final sunset from the Hotel Molokai. 

Thanks for reading.


Comments:
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