And here are the next two video’s. In the first one we drive over the Pali from the westside (leeward) towards the eastside (windward), and in the other one, I drive exactly the other way around, so from windward back to the leeward side of the island.

It was sunny the whole morning, even when we drove towards the Pali from the consulate, but the weather wasn’t on our side for some reason (which can happen easily when you are at the Pali, there’s more rain in that area than in others as the clouds remain close to the mountains). So you will see some rain falling down in the first video.

I made these video’s actually a bit because of some people who recently asked me about how it was to drive on the Pali, this because of my earlier post about the Pali. It was those questions that made me think about making a video of the Pali, when we would drive over it again.. and so here it is

I hope you liked the videos a bit (even though they might be a bit monotone, but yeah, that is my own feeling, it is after all not the first time I drove over that road haha). I will post some more videos soon. Michelle and I want to get out more often, so we should film a bit more also

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.

A bit later than expected but here is, still as promised, a bit more complete report of our wedding day.. better late than never

Our day started out a bit early, something we did not counted on as we would marry only at 3 pm. It was probably our nerves but oh well, we still had a few things to do so it wasn’t all that bad.

Michelle’s sister, Jey, came around lunch hour together with her daughter and her mother, to us to do Michelle’s make-up and to follow us towards the location where the wedding ceremony would be held.

Michelle and I left a little after 2 pm towards Nu’uanu in Michelle’s mother’s Benz together with her mom, aunt and grandmother in the back (the car is big enough and they are not so big so that was pretty easy). Michelle’s aunt was a bit surprised as she did not know that I can actually use my Dutch drivers license here on Hawaii and said something like “Oh, you can drive already?“, I had to laugh a bit about it since it sounded a bit funny and told her that I had my license for about 12-13 years now and that it is valid over here also.

When we arrived at the botanical garden, we arrived a bit too early as we counted on some traffic before we left but there was none haha, it turned out that it wasn’t so bad as the Reverend was there also already. He was still gathering some things from his car and in the mean time we walked towards to him. We introduced ourselves and he asked me how to pronounce my name (always fun haha) and after a few tries, he had the catch. I joked a bit about my name and the people back in the Netherlands not making it too easy on him and he replied with “hoe heet je?” (what is your name), and added “thats about all I know in Dutch haha“. I was a bit surprised that he knew a bit of Dutch and asked him how it came he knew Dutch and he told us that he stayed for a couple of years in the Netherlands around his 13th, 14th years of age since his dad used to be in the army. He told us that he lived in The Hague (He said ‘Den Haag’, the Dutch form) before and he actually pronounced the name (in Dutch) pretty well, also the names Schiphol and Scheveningen came out without any problem, which I think is pretty amazing as a lot of non-Dutch people have lots of problems with the ’sch’ part. I thought it was really good. After a bit of chit chatting, we went downwards, towards the area where we would get married.

Once we got there (it sounds like a pretty long walk which it wasn’t haha), it turned out that the photographer had already arrived, the Reverend send away a few kids who were behind us on the waterfall (probably because of the risk of them jumping into the water and making us wet), and we went to make a few pictures, such as putting on the Haku Lei (the flowers on the head of Michelle) and so. Since the pictures of the photographer are on a different website and since I rather not have any copyright claimes (you never know), I will give the link only for now: http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/thumbpage.aspx?e=4226692. You can, however, see some more pictures down here which we made of our wedding (well ok, Michelle’s mother made these, we didn’t, of course):

There are a lot more pictures of this part of our marriage but we do not have these yet, these will come a bit later

Ok, so after putting on the lei’s (the flowers and such), the ceremony was good to go. The Reverend greeted everyone in Hawaiian with “Aloha kakou! E komo mai!” and continued in English (which is, of course, a lot easier to follow haha) and said a few things until it was time to ask the important questions “Michelle and Jeroen, are you now ready to be joined as husband and wife?” on which we replied wholeheartedly with yes. Then we each got the individual question if we would want to become husband and wife with: “Jeroen/Michelle, do you take Michelle/Jeroen to be your wedded wife/husband to be her/his husband/wife, partner & best friend - to love, honor & cherish her/him in all your days together?” on which we both answered with “I do!” (this did not go as his/her, of course, but it went with that what was suitable for each person).

After this it was time for the rings, which went as: “These circles of precious metal are symbols of wholeness and perfection. Without beginning or end, they are symbols of eternity. They are material tokens that represent  your spiritual union. You will wear them from this day forward as outer symbols of your inner devotion to each other“. And after this we could exchange the rings for real, supported with the following vows: “With love in my heart for all the world to see I have chosen you Michelle/Jeroen, as my wife/husband. I pledge to share my life openly with you, to speak the truth to you, to respect, to honor, to tenderly care for you. It is my heart’s desire to live with you through all the changes of our lives. I love you and want you as my wife/husband always“.

After this it was time for the words: “You have come together for this holy celebration, to exchange your vows and these rings before God and these witnesses. Because you have planned your marriage and your home in the purest faith, you come to this moment with all honor and integrity. Therefore, by the authority of our loving Creator - and the state of Hawaii - I now pronounce you, partners in life, husband and wife. You may kiss your true love“, which pronounced us husband and wife

After this the closing of the ceremony was there and the Reverend introduced us as newly weds:

“It is now my honor, privilege and pleasure to introduce to you and to our world: Mr. and Mrs. Jeroen Joosten. E ho’okahi ke aloha - May you always be united in love“.

And with that the ceremony was at the end, we took some more pictures and the photographer asked me a few times if I was really sure not to throw the bride into the water as, he said, it would give some real nice photo moments hahaha, yeah I believe it would be haha but no, I had to turn him down haha.

As we had to wait for a bit until we all could eat at the hotel, we decided to go towards Waikiki and take some more pictures (the hotel is nearby that spot so why not). Here are a few of these pictures:

I wont describe too much about these pictures but when you hover the cursor over the pictures, or click on them to magnify them, you will see a describtion

After this all we went towards the hotel to have a nice dinner with all of us. The food was, at least in my opinion, really great, I liked it a lot. It was a buffet in the hotel so we could take a bit of everything, which we did. There were Hawaiian dishes but also Asian or more European aimed dishes, a bit for every taste.

We also took a few pictures before dinner at the hotel:

The last picture is a picture of our marriage certificate (I should scan it but I just took a picture as the scanner is not installed on my laptop yet hehe). This is a memory, by the way, not the official marriage certificate which we will get from the state of Hawaii later on. We also received a booklet with the text of the vows and the text that the Reverend spoke during the ceremony.

After this all it was time to go home again, I think it was a really great day with lots of very nice memories

I will not write a long post since it is around eleven in the evening, I think you can understand this… I wanted to write something, though, because I know there are quite a few people who want to hear something about this =)

So today it was our wedding day, it was a great day, we had nice weather (you might say ‘how could it be different’ but the last week it hasn’t been always nice as the rainseason is approaching), it was just very beautiful.

I do not want to say too much about the whole wedding right now, I will write the long story tomorrow.. I will also post a few more pictures tomorrow, but, since I know there are some people who want to see some pictures, here are a few of them:

You can see us together on the first picture with Reverend Kermit Rydell, the second picture does not need any explanation I think and on the third picture you can see us together with Michelle’s aunt, grandmother and mother (that is from left to right on my side) and her friends aka 2nd family (from left to right on Michelle’s side): Jey, Juliet, Jennifer, Cire en Jon.

I wanted to keep it short at first but since I am working on it anyways, I could as well give some more pictures:

After the wedding ceremony we went to Waikiki where we took some more pictures at the Hilton Lagoon. The first picture is in front of this lagoon and in the background you can also see Diamond Head crater. The second picture, with the rainbow on the building, is in front of the Hawaiian Hilton hotel and the third one has been taken on the beach near Waikiki in front of the ocean (if you would sail that way, you would not find anything until you are at Antartica haha). The last picture is a photo I made from the hotel, where we had a nice dinner together with everyone, and made against the sun. I thought it was a nice picture which is why I added it.

Ok, for now I will say good night (or, for those in Europe: I wish you a great day haha). I will describe the rest of the story tomorrow

Next monday is our wedding day as most people know by now and since we will marry near downtown Honolulu, in Nu’uanu, at a botanical  garden with waterfall, and because we did not know exactly where this location would be, I went out today to see if I could find the location easily by myself and to see how long it would take me to get there.

Michelle was unable to join me unfortunately since her mother had a course all day long so Michelle had to stay behind to watch over her mothers patients and so I went alone. It was a bit exciting for me as I never went alone to town earlier, and neither to a place where I haven’t been before but fortunately it all went pretty smooth.

I checked Google Earth before I left to see where I could find the Nu’uanu botanical waterfall garden and I also looked at some streetnames and, like I thought earlier today, it was pretty simple to find this location which is good because on my way there, the fuel light went on so I did not have much room for errors in driving (and since her car isn’t the best in mileage either, it was a bit scary haha).

It took me about 30 minutes to get at Nu’uanu valley, at the botanical garden with waterfall, and when I got there, I walked down to make some pictures of the area so Michelle could see it too:

By the way, the pictures were taken with my new phone as I forgot to take my camera with me, I think that is why they are a bit too light. I think the panorama function of the phone is quite nice as you can also see in the last picture, it looks like it worked out pretty well

The first picture was the waterfall from above, the other two pictures are from the front. In the last picture you can also see where we stand and say ‘yes’ to each other, which will be at the right side. I know the waterfall isn’t super big as some others can be on Hawaii but we don’t have any problem with that as the bigger waterfalls are further away from the normal roads and sometimes also ask for a bit of a climb and we were not looking forward in that with our nice white clothes

Right, after I saw the Nu’uanu botanical waterfall garden (which is a bit empty for a garden if you ask me.. it was really nice and quiet but still, it was a bit empty haha), it was time for me to go home again, through traffic (which is funny, by the way, the traffic jams overhere seem to be in the top ten of all traffic jams in the USA and when I compare it to the Netherlands, it isn’t really even a traffic jam.. I guess they’re not used to much in the US haha), with me hoping to get back home in one piece as I only had fuel left for about 22 or 23 mile haha. I did it, though. I still have fuel for about 10 mile, which should be ok to reach a gasstation