Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be on an island full of cats? Well, then you need to start planning a trip to Lana'i. Just a short ferry ride from Maui in the Hawaiian islands will get you to the place of your dreams.

First thing you need to know about planning your trip to Lana'i is that you need to book your ferry a couple days in advance on Expedition Maui-Lanai Ferry. Tickets run round $30 each way. There is a small boat harbor in Lahaina, Maui and you can park your car for around $12 a day (honor system) a few blocks away. 

We were camping in Olawalu, so we had a short drive to the harbor. We enjoyed a nice ferry ride across the ocean while we tried to spot some end of season whales, but didn't have any luck. The views were still lovely and it was a nice 45 minute ride. 

Upon arriving on the Lana'i there were several people gathered at the ferry docks offering ride service around the island. We got the last couple seats on Rabaca's shuttle service and for $10 each got a guided tour of the city on the way to the Lana'i cat sanctuary. I read that there were not too many other stops in Lana'i beyond Sweetheart rock and the daily car rentals were pricey, so we opted for the shuttle. I read you could get around for free, but we never figured that out.

Once you get to the cat sanctuary you will find a gated entrance where they gather everyone together before signing you in.  Access is free, but donations are encouraged. They have bags of cat treats at the door to give them if you did not bring your own. 

As soon as you open the gate to walk in there is a swarm of dozens of cats that immediately approach and start begging for treats. Some like to be petted, some don't. Some prefer pets to treats. The sanctuary is a large outdoor gated enclosure on a wide swatch of green grass with trees and plants growing around. There are separate sheltered buildings for the cats to feed, or hide if they prefer. The shier or more feral kitties seem to stick to the far back of the enclosure where there is more tall brush to hide in and things to crawl under away from the human visitors.  They have separate enclosure for the senior kitties, kittens, and sick kitties with feline FIV. We made sure to spend time with all of them.  Everywhere you looked there were kitties, in the trees, in the grass, on the tables, in your lap. It was awesome.  We stayed there for about 4 hours, partially hiding out from the rain by putting down a towel and letting the kitties flock to us. It was such a great way to sped the day.

​They said there were currently 620 cats at the sanctuary, all from Lana'i alone. I was sad to hear they were euthanizing the cats on the other islands, especially after seeing all the cats at the park in Oahu a couple years ago and loving the experience so much, but when we went back this year there were no cats there at all.  They said they do adoption and even in-house adoptions, where they are adopted, but live in the sanctuary. Honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad life for a cat. I had a couple snugglers that I would have adopted if the 12 hour trip home wouldn't be so awful and stressful on a poor kitty.

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After Chris brought out the hook to drag me away, we finally left and caught a ride with the car service back to Lana'i city where we had lunch and explored the town's art gallery and art co-op. 

When I was about 10 years old my 13 years old brother and I were wandering the beaches in Florida a few weeks after a hurricane behind rows of private beach houses. We were the only one's around for miles. The beach was littered with all kind of debris and dead sea creatures. We were looking for shells and picking up sand dollars. There was so much gross stuff every now and then I would let out a yelp. My ankles were cut and bleeding from the various things in the water as I waded in the shallows. At one point my thoughts about the pretty shells were interrupted when I heard a splashing. I looked up and saw about 10 feet in front of me was a large shark, thrashing it's fins and jaws. It appeared to have been coming toward me, but got stuck on the sand bar.  You know those old road runner cartoons that show the person frozen with fear? Yeah, that was me. It was a for real thing.  I grew up in the era of Jaws, like so many of us Gen X and Y-ers, the impact was indelible. I stood there in 8 inches of ocean water staring at the shark, completely paralyzed. I couldn't move or speak. Finally, I was able to get the powers of speech back to try to get my brother's attention and repeatedly called out his name, but like Chicken Little who cried wolf one too many times, he ignored my cries.  He finally did look up to see the shark, to which he enthusiastically responded "It's a porpoise! It's a porpoise!"  And at that very moment our mom appeared several hundred feet behind us from between two houses on stilts shouting "Get out of the water! It's a shark! Get out of the water!" Like the cartoons, the frozenness melted from my body almost like a switch being turned on to wake my body back up and I immediately  turned and sprinted from the water up the hill and into my grandparents awaiting RV as fast as my skinny little legs could carry me.  We got some binoculars and a camera and headed back to the beach, at which point you could see there were actually multiple sharks in the water coming in to feed. 

Decades later I find myself helping people to overcome the impact of traumatic experiences in their life on a daily basis. I understand how when faced with something terrifying, your body may not respond the way you wish it would or they way others think it should.  If you've been reading our blog, you probably noticed that fear is not something that holds us back much on our travel adventures and I always wondered how I would do if faced with a shark again.  So, naturally shark cage diving had been on my bucket list for years and Hawaii gave us the perfect opportunity to try it out.

On our first day in Hawaii I made reservations with North Shore Shark Diving Adventures, but the trip was postponed due to weather. In the meantime, we decided to hit up our favorite snorkeling spot on the North Shore, Pupukea, also known as Shark's cove. One of the other snorkelers told us he spotted a reef shark just outside of the cove, where the tide water rushed in. The tide was already coming in and the water wasn't very calm anyway, so the current was strong, but we swam out anyway and clung to the rocks at the edge of the cove to keep from being blown like a fire hose into the water, and sure enough there was a white tipped reef shark, maybe about 5 feet long, swimming in circles below us.  Later research told us this is a pretty harmless shark that feeds from the bottom of the ocean. We didn't know that at the time, but I suppose we still felt the security of the rocks that surrounded us. Seemed pretty crazy to be open water snorkeling with a shark, especially since we would be paying to do that in a few days.

After that, I wondered if we should still do that cage dive, but the bucket list was calling, so we plowed ahead. We met up at our harbor meeting point, took a boat with our fellow divers and dive masters out into the ocean about 3 miles off the coast of Hawaii. They told us that the sharks follow the shrimp boats for chum and since they think we are a shrimp boat, they come when they hear the similar engine. The thing about Hawaii is the water is pure blue, almost like glass that you can see through on a clear day, so when we got out there, you could see these massive Galapagos sharks swimming all around the boat. You could see their fins come up and you could see them dive beneath the water. We were surrounded by them. These sharks were about 10 feet long, and are labeled "aggressive."  These guys looked like JAWS and wow, it was awesome, so of course we were getting in the water with them! We threw on our snorkels, climbed into the cage, jumped into the water and watched mesmerized as these ocean beasts circled us. Their eyes were like a cats staring back at us. When one would disappear into the depths another would appear in its place.  I'm very buoyant and short, so I can't reach to stand on the cage bars, which is pretty apparent and less than graceful in the video. HAHA. A very cool experience. Turns out, despite my early experience, I did just fine overcoming those once paralyzing fears. Hope you get a chance to try it for yourself. Even if you pee your pants, no one will notice it!  Thanks to North Shore Diving Adventures for some of the videos and the great memories! You should check them out (no, they aren't paying us, they don't even know we have a blog, we just really liked them). In the end, we didn't become the chum, but checked off another one from the bucket list!
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