Tomorrow night is Book Club, my sweet friend Sarah is hosting. She has been talking about and recommending Moloka'i for the last year. I'm so glad she picked it. Hutters: I fell hard for this book. It is so, so, SO good. Difficult to read as a mama, but worth the hard passages. I read most of it today (just in the nick of time!) while Goo and Ivy slept away the stomach flu.
I had the good fortune of visiting Moloka'i on one of the Botting family trips to the Hawaiian Islands. We had been staying in Maui and on a whim decided to check it out. Moloka'i is an amazingly beautiful if not rugged island, quite remote and sparsely populated. Truth: The ferry boat over from Lahaina was harrowing. And there were moments of such trepidation on the angry sea, we wondered if the boat might indeed capsize. If you ever decide to visit, maybe don't take the ferry boat. Also the atmosphere once off the ferry was spooky. We all agreed the island felt haunted, no doubt the tragic history of so much sickness, sadness and death of the residents of the leper colony contributed to that prickly feeling on the back of our necks. Margaret broke her foot our one morning after breakfast, it was awful. We visited a coffee plantation, the aroma was divine. We looked out over Kalaupapa (the leper settlement) but didn't tour, it was sad enough from above (though now I wish we had). I enjoyed two of the best meals of my life (dinner: local fish, breakfast: coconut French toast) during our two day stay on the island. We decided to fly back to Maui rather than risk our lives on the ferry and Margaret more injury or trauma to her foot.
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