A1

While we were on Moloka'i, the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. The island is so remote and local that we didn't have a signal for most of the trip. We had no idea that there was a tsunami coming towards us (thankfully there wasn't). Mark and I were camping near the beach when we were woken up by two police officers with flashlights telling us we had to leave because a tsunami was coming. Insane!! The sirens hadn't gone off yet at this point, so we were both in a sort of daze. The sound of the siren is something I don't think I'll ever forget...I felt like we were going to get bombed, as if we were in the middle of a war. So bizarre. We ended up moving to the middle of a giant field up near Maunaloa, and slept there until the morning. No one really talked about the "aftermath," or what could have been, so it was sort of business as usual on the island. It wasn't until we got back to O'ahu that we realized the damage in Japan was so much worse than we had anticipated. You can really feel that isolated in Hawai'i. Amazing and really unfortunate at the same time. I'm not sure what to make of our fortune. This is the second major natural disaster that I have been affected by where I have managed to come out unscathed. Is this some sort of masochistic trend? Possibly.

Halawa Bay. Unreal!

Part III up next...