Hawaii has many folklore and myths, especially when it is about the Pali.

The Pali, or actually Nu’uanu Pali, is a part of the east cliffs (Pali in Hawaiian) of the Ko’olau mountain, which can be found on top of the Nu’uanu valley (our marriage, for example, took place in the Nu’uanu botanical gardens, which can be found a bit at the beginning of the valley).

The Pali Highway is one of the three ways to get directly from our side (leeward, or the westside) to the other side of the island (ok, there is another way but then you will have to drive around the coast and that can take a while). Basically you are going over and through the mountain.

I will give you a few pictures (only the first two pictures are made by myself (in 2007), I found the rest through images.google.com, a couple of them say “Picture by Jai” when hovering them, these are found on this forum and made by Jai), so you can get a bit of an idea of how the Pali looks like.

First our side, the westside:

This is a little spectactulair sight as you can see. This is mostly because it goes up very gradually over a distance of about 5.5-6 miles.. besides this, you find yourself here in a valley until you are at the top, so there are no cliffs or something but mountain walls with lots of green from the rainforests (especially on the top, below you can still find some houses).

The other side, the Windward side or eastside, looks like this:

A bit more nice, I think

The Pali has a rich history, there has been one of the bloodiest battles of Hawaii: King Kamehameha I wanted to unite the islands of Hawaii into one kingdom and went, with his army of 10,000 warriors, after conquering Maui and Moloka’i, towards O’ahu. On this island, the decisive battle took place in Nu’uanu Valley and the defenders of O’ahu, led by Kalanikūpule, were then driven up to the cliffs where they were more than 400 warriors were driven over the cliff and fell about 1000 feet lower towards their death.

The Pali highway, or actually the first road over Nu’uanu Pali, was build in 1845 to connect the eastside with the westside. In 1898 they constructed this road into the (old) Pali highway and during the construction, they found about 800 skulls which they believe are remains of the warriors who fell of the cliffs during the battle. This road has been replaced later on by the current Pali highway and it’s tunnels (see the pictures above).

You can see the old Pali highway on the next photo’s:

You can see the old Pali highway in the left on the first picture, and a bit to the right, just below, is the new Pali highway. At the other two pictures you can see that it this road has become pretty green with grass and other stuff.. They closed the road for traffic but you can still walk there as a pedestrian, as far as I know.

Right, back to the folklore and myths, because that’s why I am writing this post…

As you can understand, there are a couple of myths who came out of the happenings back in 1795. But there are also a couple of new and more recent myths. They all happen on or around the Pali, and it is, according to the stories, especially at night, something one should watch out for.

There are the ‘Night Marchers’, which are spirits of old warriors which you can find on all the islands, and especially on places where there were big battlefields, like Nu’uanu Pali.. There are multiple legends about them and one of them is that when you see a Night Marcher right into the eyes, that they’ll force you to walk along with them into eternity, but if there is a relative who is already walking with them, then you will be spared. The Hawaiians tell that when you come in the vicinity of the Night Marchers, you need to lay down on your belly and hold your face to the ground to avoid any eye contact. You need to be quiet, breathe silently and especially not move. Some also say that they sometimes nudge you to provoke a reaction and to take you with them after all. Nice story.. brrr…

And here are many stories like this here in Hawaii.. there are, for example, two stones to be found in the back of Nu’uanu valley, Hapu’u and Ka-lae-hau-ola, from which is said that these represent a pair of goddesses who were guardians of the passage down the pali. Travellers would leave offerings of flowers or bark cloth to ensure a safe trip, and parents buried the umbilical cords of newborns under the stones as a protection against evil. It is also said that there is a “mo’o wahine” (a lizard woman) lingering around the pass. A mo’o wahine is a mythical creature who can take the shape of a beautiful woman and lure male travellers over the cliff to their dead. A bit like the story of the Lorelei at the river Rhine.

But ok, I can keep telling stories, and there are many other stories also, but I want to go back to the title of this post: Pork and the Pali Highway.

One of the myths, or folklore, which goes around, and is also strict believed by many people here, is that one should never take pork over the Pali, and especially not at night. The exact stories are a bit different from each other but the legend is that when people try to take pork, in whatever form, over Nu’uanu Pali by car, that their car will stall and will not start until the pork has been removed out of their car. According to some stories, the pork needs to be raw, in some others it should be cooked (like in Michelle’s version where it should be there as a dish). Some versions tell that this only happens when it is dark and in other versions they say that a white dog will appear and that you need to give the meat to the dog before you can continue to drive.

This legend comes from an ancient Hawaiian mythology. According to the legend, the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele and the demigod Kamapua’a (a half-man-half-hog), had a turbulent relationship and the two of them agreed to never visit each other. So when someone tries to take pork over the Pali, then the legend tells that symbolic bring a part of Kamapua’a from one side to the other, and Pele will make sure this will not happen.

There are more stories about food and the Pali. Apparently there have been attacks by hungry spirits who attacked travellers for their food. Truckers tie, for example, a fresh green Ti leaf, the leaf of a banana or a piece of bamboo to their containers with food to divert the evil spirits.

Right.. why are writing all this, you might ask yourself.. well, actually because I recently thought to myself that we (that is Michelle and me) brought pork, at night, over the Pali ourselves somewhere last week…

Why we did it? Well, we didn’t even think about it at the moment itself, neither Michelle or myself thought about the fact that we had pork in our car. We ate in a restaurant and Michelle had some porkchops, she couldn’t eat it all and so we took it with us as a doggiebag (even though it was a box haha). Michelle had a meeting that night, at around 9.45 PM (she could go on an earlier time but Michelle wanted to go the one at this time, this just to explain the ‘odd’ time of the meeting), and since dinner took a bit longer than expected, I told her that I would tag along so she didn’t had to drop me off first (I would just wait in the car for a bit, it only would take for about an hour).

Michelle has her job in Kaneohe, on the eastside of the island, so on the other side of the mountain range. We placed the leftover food in the back of the car, in a closed compartment (this so the car wouldn’t smell) and we went on our way to the other side of the mountains. We went over the H3 on our way there.. this is the quickest way for us, but it is also the most unpleasant way for me as it is pretty high for a longer period and at the other side of the mountain, you are on a really high bridge for a while, and yeah, people who know me a bit, also know that I am terribly afraid of heights haha. We decided that Michelle would drive there over the H3 and I would drive back over the Pali since I am less scared on that road (the Pali Highway goes up pretty quick on the eastside and the westside is really not scary at all to drive on, so you are quickly without any fear).

We did as we said… and now you want to know if something happened on our journey to the other side and back, over the Pali? Well, no.. not that I know of.. I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary that night and the car didn’t stop either, thankfully.

Why nothing happened with us? Well, you could say it is just a myth, and that it doesn’t hold any truth.. but yeah, how do you explain all those other people to whom it did happen? Or, for example, the people got bad luck after they took pieces of volcanic stone with them from one of the islands? It is the same goddess after all (and I think about a travelshow back in the Netherlands in which the tv host once went to Hawaii and placed a piece of volcanic stone in his pants.. as soon as he did that, his hat blew away). Various TV hosts also took several tests, one of the tests can be read here: Pork and Pali are Recipes for Disasters (pretty nice story).

Other reasons which you could think of could be that our car was too new.. well, I doubt that was a reason.. in the end they’re all the same of course. Maybe it was because we never thought about us bringing pork over the Pali or maybe it was because our car has been dressed up with bamboo wood on some parts inside the car. Or maybe it had to be raw meat after all and not ready-to-eat meat, like a platelunch, like Michelle said.. or it is possible that these things only occured on the old Pali Highway like some stories say (and this road knows more creepy stories, the thick forest is a very good background for ghoststories in the dark).

No, I think it had to do with any of these things. I think Pele saw that we took the meat from her side on to the other side and brought it back, and so we basically brought it back where it belonged. I also think it might have something to do with compassion because of our upcoming child and possibly also because of me being afraid of heights.. I wouldn’t have to think about our car stalling while being on the eastside of the mountainrange (on whatever of the three roads), I wouldn’t know what to do.

Anyways, I went at least three times back onto the Pali last week. One time to surprise Michelle and to pick her up from her job, something else happened on this journey when I was driving on the Pali alone and all of the sudden I found a car next to me.. it has nothing to do with folklore, of course, but I really did not notice him until he was really right next to me (on the right side, I drove in the middle of a 3 lane road, and he stayed on my right side until we went over into a two lane road, just before the tunnels.. nothing scary, just weird). And I also went back over the Pali the day after (now with chicken and beef, remains of a different lunch haha) to bring Michelle back to her job, this was during the day and fortunately I didn’t notice anything on this trip either.

Right, fortunately nothing happened. You can say something about it being folklore or myths but the fact that people here really believe into this all has something special.. I think I would never take pork with me over the Pali with my full consciousness, not even now nothing happened this time… you never know.

Today we had our new appointment at around 2 PM, just like I told in a previous post.. we were there right on time, at around 1:55 PM.

Michelle was called around 2:45 PM (yep, after 45 minutes) to pee a bit in a cup (we have no idea why but oh well). Then Michelle came back to sit with me and wait a bit more… when it was 3.10 PM we were called and could take place in the consulting room.

Once in that room, we jokingly said to each other that they just moved us just because nobody was available but since they read my last blogpost, they were afraid that we might just walk away haha.

Yeah, it sure is something… anyways, after a new wait of about 5 minutes, the obstetrician came to talk to us and said “sorry but we have nobody available”…

Haha nah, that is a joke hahaha!!

Everything was true except for her announcement haha.. nah, what she basically did was listening to the heart of our baby through a doppler machine (the ultrasound will be done by the other company so we have to wait until May 19, which is a bit sad as we were hoping to see some of our kid today) and she asked mostly things to Michelle and myself about our physical wellbeing, if we had certain diseases and that kind of stuff. I think we have been inside for like 10 minutes, after that they took some blood from Michelle (the poor kid was really pale after the 4 tubes that they took from her… nah, just kidding she didn’t notice much of it she told me) and we received a package with some magazines and some information about the hospital.

Our next appointment will be on May 19 with this, and the other company. In the morning we go to the other company for a few things, one will be the ultrasound and in the afternoon we will go to the obstetrician where we will be doing I don’t know what

One of the things we found in the information package of the hospital is the possibility to get the first picture of your baby on a website, you will be able to see this first picture on the baby’s first website by entering the birthdate and a password… this is something we most likely will do.

We had an appointment at 11.30 AM with the obstetrician.. or so we thought…

Michelle went ahead because we had a hard time finding a parkingspot. When I finally found a spot to park our car, Michelle was there already, telling me that our meeting has been rescheduled to the upcoming Tuesday…

Right… I can tell you that this was something I was not exactly happy with.. it is like there is always something over there.

When we went there for the first time, we were waiting for about 45 minutes, only to find out that the obstetrician did not had any time for us.. I agree, that happens. The meeting after this was cancelled by phone, just before we would go there, nice. After this we got an appointment which actually did happen, but I did feel like ‘if they cancel it again, we really don’t come back again and we will go somewhere else’..

But ok, today we had a new appointment, and we have some things we need to ask, but this appointment was also cancelled.. the reason of today was that the obstetrician, which Michelle needs, couldn’t help us because this obstetrician isn’t covered by our insurance.. yeah, now I ask you.. couldn’t they tell us last time? They knew before what insurance Michelle has.

Right.. so we have a new appointment, with a different obstetrician (at the same company, though) which is allowed to help us under our insurance

The score at the moment is: 4 appointments from which only 1 continued..

I think it is a little bit ridiculous. Anyways, this is the last time.. if they don’t want to take our money (or actually the money from the insurance company), then it is their problem and we will go to a different place.. this only costs us time and effort for nothing.

ps. no, our insurance is perfectly ok.. I tend to think that if she isn’t allowed to help us, that this says more about her than about our insurance

Today we had, or actually just Michelle, a first trimester screening. During a first trimester screening, they look if there is a higher risk for a child with the Down syndrome or if there are any birth defects and such. They did this today through an ultrasound and by taking some blood.

I can’t say much about it, really, just that everything was perfectly ok, that is at least what they could tell us from the ultrasound. The results from the bloodtest will take a bit longer before we know a result of it but I think it will all be ok, I am not really worried about it all

It was pretty fun to see the echo today because our peanut starts to look more and more like a real baby. The length of the child was about 5.1 centimeters, or about 2 inches, according to the info on the screen, which reflects a pregnancy of about 12 weeks and 1 day, this is about right (it should be 11 weeks and 6 days according to our info).

There actually was a double surprise (the first was that they actually did an ultrasound, which I didn’t expect as they told us up front that they would just take some blood from Michelle), the second surprise was that they also did a 3D echo (or is it 4D? I don’t know lol).. that was something we really never expected, we thought we had to do something like that later at some different place but now we got it for free along the whole thing

They gave us some pictures on paper, of course, but we also received a CD-rom with some pictures and some short movies on it (all just a few seconds). I placed the movies behind each other in one movie, you can see them below:

And then to think that Michelle told me yesterday “you don’t have to go with me, if you don’t want to”, this was mostly because we didn’t expect that something special would happen. So, yes, I am happy I did go after all, this was really great to see.

We decided today to go for a different car after all.. again we chose for a BMW and again one of the 5 series, but now a sedan..

This is a second hand car, but since there is only 450 miles on the counter, you might as well say that it is a pretty new one.  Anyways, we got an even better deal for this one..

Of course we made some pictures. They are taken in our carport though as it is raining almost the whole afternoon already and I kind of doubt that it will get better today (it will probably in the evening or at night):

Doesn’t look so bad, right? What do you say? You liked the X5 better? Well, so do we and that’s why we will bring this car back tonight and pick up the X5 again

This car is not ours, we received it for today from the BMW dealer as a loaner because they are going to tint our front windows, so they become a bit darker.. it should become the same as the backwindows.

I have to say that this car is also great to drive in, but yeah, I guess that’s to be expected, it is a pretty nice ride.

But ok, nice ride or not, I still can’t wait until we receive our own ride back again

edit: No worries, we got our X5 back again and it sure looks better with the tint on the front windows.

Since we have a baby coming, we decided a while ago that we could better trade our car in for a car that would also be more aimed at a family. The old car was a BMW M3 (for those who do not know what kind of car this is, this is a sportscar) and I can tell you that we felt pretty bad that the car would have to go, especially Michelle, because, well, it is a special car. For those who didn’t see our M3, here’s a picture:

As you can see, it is a pretty cool car.

But yeah, we didn’t feel it would make up as a family car. Problem is the backseat.. It does have a backseat and you are able to sit there pretty decent (as long as you sit behind Michelle, my legs are too long haha) but to put a baby seat in and out constantly, and to put a baby in and out the car, that wont be the most fun to do. It is, like said, not really spacious in the back but the car is also lowered so you will have to dive into the car if you want to do whatever you need to do with a baby. Not the most ideal thing.

Now you might say “but you guys also have a Benz?” (although, you will be able to say that if you read the previous posts also haha), but yah, we don’t think this will be the best thing to do. That car is older and I don’t like driving in it, it is a bit like a ship, so to speak, because it will go left and right in the corners and on roadbumps. Not really my taste. And besides that, the car is also contaminated… it has some pest in it which is almost impossible to get out of the car (we already had a chemical warfare but we cannot reach in the parts where we need to be)… during the day it isn’t much of a problem but the critters come out when it gets darker.. brrr… no, that is not something where we want to put a baby. That car is more like a car to transfer things or when we go to the beach and get dirty feet and want to get into the car.. that car is bound to get dirty. No, for the baby we want a good, clean and safe car.

Right, so we knew that we needed a new car and we’ve been looking around for a while for different cars. We also went to a carshow in Honolulu about a week and half ago where we could see almost all current cars at once and one of the few cars in which we really felt in love with was the BMW X5, what a beauty of a car that was, to see and to sit in it. We also looked at different brands, but we weren’t too fond about those other cars, we really liked the X5 a lot better so when we left the carshow, we already made some sort of a decision. As for the American car models, we don’t really like those models, even if they might have been suitable for our needs also.

We went for some test driving last monday and, well, the BMW X5 was a winner again, with everything that it had, it was just a beautiful car. It sat right, it drove ok and it looked great.. yeah, everything was just right with that car.

Sooo, as you might understand, we decided to go for the X5.. but yeah, only if we could get a reasonable deal, also in regards to our trade in… And we did!

I can tell it even better, we’re already the proud owners of a new BMW X5. We were so content about it and decided the BMW X5 is really the car for us, and it was even better that they had a few on stock (which saves in the costs and wait time, we could easily wait up to 3 months if we had to build it specially for us).

“Stock? Didn’t they drive with it then?” you might ask, and, well, they did of course.. 5 miles on the counter… in other words: Brandnew!

From all cars that they had in stock (which they had enough) we picked one that would especially be good for the baby. We decided that the car should have a rear climate package, which basically means that the back windows are darker tinted, that it has retractable window shades and that it is possible to heat or cool every part of the car per seat.. the other options were not so important and so the next choice would be the color.. the color we choose for was ‘Platinum Bronze Metallic’ with a beige interior and bamboo wooden accents. When we saw him in real (you can hardly make a choice from a booklet), we were sold for real..

Here it is:

Looks good, right? The tailgate is very simple to open en close, by the way, it is fully automatic. You press a button and it opens or closes, whatever you want, ideal.

For those who wonder why we don’t have any plates yet (especially the European readers), these are ordered and will come in a few weeks. When a car is new here, you can drive without plates, as long as you have a paper on the back with some standard information and the date when the first registration is.

A bit weird, I agree, but yeah, back in the Netherlands you would have had to wait a few weeks before you can actually drive and here you can go right away… so that is also pretty cool I think =)

I think you want to see the interior also, here it is:

As you can see on the photo in the middle, there is a little screen. You can see everything of the car through this screen. You never have to check your oil or your tirepressure, or what ever there is that might need to be checked, the car checks everything for you and it notifies you through that screen (which is connected to the main computer) whenever there is something wrong… you can also set everything in a certain way and still have it all different per person (if Michelle drives, she will have different preferences and when I am driving, my preferences will be loaded, it sees this through the key that is used when you open the doors.. well, that means if you use the key because it has a keyless entry, even starting can be done without key (but you need the key inserted to make the different settings per key so it knows for which key it needs to change it)). You can also forward some of the functions to some knobs on the steeringwheel, whatever function you want can be used from the steering wheel after you set it, it is completely adjustable for ones wishes.

Here are some pictures of some of the screens (but  not all of them, there is too much haha):

You see a few menus on the first picture where you can choose for several settings, the second picture shows that everything is ‘ok’, and on the last picture you see the phonebook (which is loaded through bluetooth from you normal cellphone, you can also call handsfree and such like this (I deleted one number as it is our dealer’s cellphone number and I am unsure if it would be ok to post it).

On the first picture you see some information, the middle screen is for the temperature and ventilator settings, which is also completely electronic, and the last screen shows the parking distance to objects and as you can see, there is an object on the right front side of the car.. when it becomes red, you should stop (but there is still a foot space left, so it is pretty safe).

The first picture shows a view of the radiostations.. there are not many stations set yet, that will be done later haha. It is, by the way, a HD radio so the sound is pretty good also. The middle picture shows the tire pressure.. everything is green so the pressure is ok. And the last (a bit vague, sorry) picture shows the screen where you can set the height of the tailgate opening (imagine you have a low garage, then you can set it in such a way so it doesn’t hit the ceiling) and like said before, the tailgate is completely automatic.

On the first picture you see the lighting of the door as you will see it in the evening when you get out, on the middle screen you can see a red light in the door (which is a bit less bright in real life, this is always cool to find something in the dooropening) and on the last picture you can see the lights below the door handles in the dark (the picture is a bit vague, sorry for that).

By the way, on some screens you see the word ‘lolipod’, this is the name of Michelle’s ipod, she gave it that name once so you see it on the screen also as the ipod has been connected to the sound system (for which we have a connection for in our car, also ideal).

And there are a lot more other nice things available on our car, for example the steering wheel which can be set to a certain height and distance and that is completely automatic after it has been set. When the car is turned on, the steer goes to the specific settings and when you turn the car off, it will go back to the normal setting. A glass panorama moonroof. BMW Assist. All mirrors dim automatically, so when it gets dark, they get darker also so you won’t get blinded from other cars, this works also like this with our interior. There is a compass in the rear view mirror (why, we’re not sure haha), it is the letter you can see in the picture above, it shows an S which obviously means South. Chairs that you can set in many different ways, also with lumbar support and such, Active Steering, which basically means that, depending on your speed, you can steer more easy or hard, also ideal. It has an USB and AUX port and in the trunk we have a power supply which is also easy when you want to vaccuum the car.

And there are so many more options available… the car is a four wheel driven car, when we steer in the dark then the side we steer to gets extra light (at slower speeds), it has a hill decent control, cruise control.. umm.. you know what? You should look for those things on the BMW website, it is too much to name it all

The car is also really safe when it is about impact and such (the safest at the moment), I think this car is really suitable to transport our baby in.

I think you can imagine that we are really happy and pretty proud of our new car.. I cannot wait until I can drive it again and it is even harder to wait to the moment that we can transport our baby with it.