We arrived into Molokai on Monday, October 1, 2012.  We’re staying in one of the condos called Molokai Shores which is located just 1 1/4 miles east of the main town of Kaunakakai.  The photo below was taken from the patio of our first floor condo.  (The island you can see off shore is Lanai.)  There are about 100 units here.  We’ve met several nice people staying here, many of which own one of the condos that they occupy part time, during the mainland winter months.  They invited us to take part in their weekly “pot luck” dinner that they hold every Wednesday just before sundown at the picnic tables you can see in the photo.

The island of Molokai is quite different from the more popular islands of Oahu, Maui, Hawaii and Kauai.  There are no mega resorts with nightly luau’s or glitzy shopping malls.  Life here seems to have a slower pace with agriculture being the primary economic driver.  Below you can see the “main drag” in downtown Kaunakakai.

There are primarily 4 areas of interest on Molokai:  Kaunakakai, Kalaupapa peninsula on the north side, Halawa Valley on the east end and Kaluakoi Bay/Papohaku Beach on the west end.  We’ll be exploring each of these areas over the next few weeks.

There is a shuttle bus service that connects these various parts of the island.  There is no charge to ride the bus but “donations” are welcome.  We took our first ride on the shuttle yesterday to take us to “up country” Molokai, this being the north central portion of the island.  This route dropped us in Kualapuu.  From there we took a walk (turned out to be a 12 mile round trip) that allowed us to take the photo below.  More on this later.