We are breaking up the Jalamundo Road Trip into a few different parts to avoid crazy long posts and because some of the legs feel like their own separate little adventures. This part starts with our final week in SF, which was spent crashing at a different friend’s house every night and doing a lot of final goodbyes. We came back after Hawaii to get the truck, and since we decided to leave on the new moon because MEANING, we had to wait a week to leave. This was mostly cozy hang time with our buddies and getting some final stuff together, as we had already done the whole goodbye to city thing in October. Basically this was the longest goodbye to a place and people that ever existed. Especially since we had told folks we were leaving way before we even quit our jobs. So, although it was sad, it was time to finally go. This time, for real.

We took off and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway or Highway 1 to San Luis Obispo, where we stayed at the SLO Hostel in the historic district for a night. It was a really lovely converted house with a mix of business and pleasure travelers. We moved on from there to visit friends in southern California, where we did some touristing around. The Griffith Observatory in L.A. is super neat and we were pleasantly surprised by how great the hiking trails were around there.  Hiking in L.A.?  Who Knew!?  From L.A. it was on to San Diego where we stayed with more friends and had a great time going to the San Diego Zoo.

After SoCal, we crossed our first state line into Arizona (!) where we enjoyed the cool desert air and visited some of Javi’s old stomping grounds. Javi had spent some time in Prescott Arizona during his grad school days to do some interesting sustainability work with the ECOSA institute. ECOSA, founded by Anthony Brown, offers students the opportunity to study ecological design surrounded by Prescott’s awesome natural environment. We visited the school and Mr. Brown while we were there and Javi got caught up on the latest ECOSA news. We stayed in Prescott that night and moved onwards to our next stop, New Mexico, where we spent about a week. Our friends in Los Alamos, NM are super fun adventurers so of course the first day was spent mountain biking down a freezing cold snowy mountain. We knew we were in good hands and came out alive and well, albeit a little bruised. The rest of the week was spent enjoying some cozy home time playing board and video games and exploring northern NM. We had a soak in the nearby snowy hot springs. We visited historic buildings and churches in Los Alamos and Santa Fe. We went to Meow Wolf (must see), a wild interactive art and literary adventure that has to be experienced to be believed.  And we visited some artist friends in Truchas who shared lunch and some incredible life stories with us.

We then left our desert friends and headed towards a solid chunk of Texas family time. After stopping through Austin, where Javi went to undergrad and where his sister and her family live, we went on to Brownsville in way south Texas on the Gulf of Mexico where the rest of his family live. The Austin crew soon followed, and we all spent about two weeks enjoying each others company over the Christmas holiday. Javi has two sisters, each with a husband and two kids, so our time was mostly spent at his parents’ house hanging out with everyone and doing kid stuff. Christmas time in south Texas means perfect beach weather so the whole gang spent some quality time at South Padre Island as well.

Those two weeks and in fact the whole first part of the Road Trip flew by in an instant, and soon we were on our way out of Texas for the next phase.  At this point the truck was still full of too many possessions and we were under pressure to make it to Chattanooga for New Years Eve so it didn’t quite feel like “life on the road” just yet but it definitely was starting to get there.

SF to Brownsville!!!

 

After we left our jobs in September 2016, we had a month long staycation in San Francisco. We kicked around, hung out with friends, saw some sights, ate good food, and said goodbye to our city. Then we prepared ourselves for our first Jalamundo adventure. HAWAII!

Like so many other folks around the world, we had dreamed of Hawaii for years. And it was only a 5 hour flight away from us. We figured that if we were going to leave the west coast we finally needed to take advantage of our close proximity to paradise. It just so happened that Laura’s parents were planning a trip in early November to Kauai and they kindly allowed us to join them for a week. There was no way we were going to just spend a week on our first trip to Hawaii so we planned additional time in both Kauai and Maui.

Our first week in Kauai was spent with Laura’s parents at her aunt’s condo in Princeville on the north shore of the island. This was the more “comfortable” portion of our trip, the rest was largely spent camping in the great outdoors. We took advantage of the activities at the resort, including hula and surfing classes for Laura and a ukelele class for Javier. We also took an incredible sunset sail with the parents as well as a lovely kayaking trip on the Wailua River. The luau that happened to be on election night was a bummer, not because of the luau itself which was quite enjoyable, but for other obvious reasons. As we tried to recover from the political nightmare (which was really just beginning), our thoughts turned to the next big move on our trip: the Kalaulau trail.

The parents headed out at the end of that first extremely relaxing week, and we then headed into an extremely non-relaxing but rewarding four days along the Napali coast. The Kalaulau trail is an 11 mile stretch of treacherous cliff hugging trail that ends at the secluded Kalaulau beach. To get started on the trail, we had to figure out what to do with our bags and rental car. It was rumored that leaving a car at the trailhead was not the best idea so we dropped our bags at a kayak shop locker and Javi parked the car under a streetlight at a busy beach lot near the trail. Javi hitched a ride back to the trailhead and off we went. We got about 2 miles in before we realized we may have gotten in a little bit over our heads. We knew it would be a tough hike but we hadn’t done much training during our mai tai-soaked first week, and we were in for a very rude awakening. We got a bit more than halfway through, 6 miles of up and down muddy trail to the Hanakoa campsite on that first night. We arrived, exhausted, ragged and bewildered, but happy. The Napali coast was as beautiful and epic as we had read. And we definitely had been needing some exercise in the fresh air.

On the second day after another arduous (and at times terrifying) day we got to an otherworldly beach, very much worth the hard work in getting there. We happened to spend our one night on the beach during the full moon. The few nomads who lived at the beach were holding a crystal prayer bowl ceremony and invited all the campers to join them for the evening. It was a lovely and grounding ceremony that brought everyone together and allowed us to celebrate the bright night sky. The next day we left the beach feeling rejuvenated and spent one more night on the way out back at the Hanakoa campsite.  We still had enough steam in us to take a quick side trip to an incredible waterfall!  On the fourth day we arrived back at the trailhead, exhausted but proud of our accomplishment. The Kalalau trail is definitely an incredible trail that should be on every hiker’s bucket list.

After a well-deserved night of pizza and rest, the next morning we continued on to Maui and spent a week road-tripping, camping, and visiting old friends. We drove the road to Hana using a handy GPS-based guided tour app, and continued on past the end around the backside of Haleakala volcano. The shifting landscape, from humid palm tree lined beaches to arid, rocky mountainsides, was dramatic and surprising. We felt like we were driving through the wild west back on the mainland. We continued the drive up to 7,000 feet where we bundled up in our freezing tent and continued on the next day to the very top of the volcano at just over 10,000 feet1

As our trip started winding down, we started to plot our future trips to the other islands and eventually our permanent life in Hawaii. Ha! But until then, we’ll have to subsist on the stories and memories from an amazing first trip.  Check out the galleries below for some additional pictures of our awesome Hawaiian journey!  Aloha & Mahalo!

Hawaii week One