One morning, our friends drove us to Kalaupapa Lookout. From there, we could see the imposing steep cliffs. Also, down on the peninsula is the Kalaupapa National Historical Site, where the leprosy colony was established and where a succession of priests and nuns worked tirelessly, self-sacrificingly to ease the lives of the people who had been condemned to living there.
On one of the information signs, there was a cute little green beetle, about a half-centimetre in diameter, crawling along (again, I used the macro lens here).
That evening, our friends took us to a fund-raiser for a hula school. Apparently the hula began on Molokai (a source of pride for the island residents), and the dancers from this school perform all over the world.
It turned out that the people running the fund-raiser had no objection to people bringing their own wine, so two of us walked three blocks into downtown and bought some wine. My choice: Flip-Flop Merlot for $5.39. Fortunately we bought three bottles of wine, cuz we drank 'em all!
The next few photos are from that event. They're not very crisp, but they capture the essence of the show.
The opening dance:
Notice the dancers were wearing red and yellow. Most (but not all) of the costumes were based on these two colours, which were the royal colours of King Kamehameha. There is a cape of red and yellow feathers that belonged to the king in the Kamehameha museum in Honolulu.
A recently written dance about the history of fishing:
And a dance about the extremely, wonderfully aromatic plumeria flower:
And finally, the Samoan fire dancers, always fun.