Keawaula

This past Sunday there was the first bike race of the season. The Makaha Time Trial hosted by Team Cambio. It was an individual time trial and a few friends and I entered the fixed gear category...

I got to see a lot of familiar faces on the race scene and got to catch up with old friends while making some new ones. Here is Sau and his wife Nimz. He runs a blog, nextelevatortrip. That in my honest opinion is the best coverage about cycling in Hawaii. His wife is a strong cyclist and actually was the only female competing in our division that day. I made some rear pocket bottle holder upgrades to some old Zachary Manago Ride in Paradise shirts and spontaneously decided to give a couple to this awesome couple.

After the time trial was over and awards were handed out. I told my two friends Brian, Ranie that I knew about a cave I read about deep in the over growth just mauka of the beach. They were all in for exploring so we just blazed our own trial into the bushes. Just as we came up to a pretty large rock structure, a yellow jacket came out of the wall and stung me in the shoulder. It wasn't painful at all but I would later be startle at the mark it left behind. I am still healing as I type.

We carefully climbed up the rock wall to get a better view point of where the cave would be found.

Someone might easily confuse this structure as a heiau but it's actually an old cattle pen. Before that it was a house site.

Ranie was actually the first one to notice the cave behind the walled enclosure.

This is undoubtedly Poha Cave. It was rediscovered on October 28, 1859 while someone was trying to build a house near it. There were three flat stones blocking the entrance to it at first. After discovery the cave was explored and the entrance was enlarge to possibly what we see today. Three days after discovering the cave, someone found water in it. The water was supposedly fresh and from an unknown spring source. After full inspection of the cave back then the cave was measured. Someone also found a traditional fishing gourd...

The cave opens up to about a 15' x 15' room with two branches leading to narrower sections. The first section I tried to inspect cut off at about the size of something a medium sized dog could enter. Although I could not see an end. That one lead back toward the ocean.

The other branch of the cave lead to what I guess is the fresh water spring. I was so delighted to expereince this and I actually dipped my hands in to see if I could smell the quality of the water. It didn't smell like ocean water, but I wasn't about to go as far as taking a sip...

Here is the small pocket of water we found. it was about the size of a bath tub. The eerie thing is that we found some candles like someone was doing something peculiar there at some point in time... 

After that awesome experience we headed back out of the cave and then hiked back through the tall grass. We took a dip in the ocean, took a cold shower, did a burn out in my car, and then bid the west side a hui hou for now...

Oh yeah, I won gold in my division that day...

...and took a dip in the spring. No disrespect, I'm sure that cows took sips out of the same spring when cattle were here. Aloha!