Salute Your Sarong

We had rented a sprawling Indonesian-style house on the West End. Our days unfurled in a lazy progression of meals, summer camp activities (painting, shell collecting, regrettably no macramé), and trips to the beach. One night, my cousins boyfriend Lucas, a seventh-generation Hawaiian, played the 'ukulele while we sat on the deck and cooked s'mores. Another editor, flipping through my photos, remarked, "How very Abercrombie & Fitch of you." I'd like to think that there was a tinge of jealousy underlying the sarcasm.

With less than 8,000 people on the entire island, it is not unusual to find yourself alone on a mile-long, stunning white-sand beach. At night it is eerily quiet and the stars are almost garishly bright. Some of the landscape looks plucked out of the African savanna, with rich red dirt roads fringed by scrubby brush and prickly trees; elsewhere there is lush tropical rain forest.

Sliced Bread Still the Best Thing

On our last night there, the kids (everyone under 26) drove into Kaunakakai for the legendary hot bread: every night except Mondays, people line up in the dark, colorfully graffitied alley behind Kanemitsu for warm, pillowy loaves of white bread that have been cut open and slathered with your choice of cream cheese, cinnamon and sugar, strawberry jam, blueberry jam, or butter. Families come and get bags of bread, teenagers loiter around and gossip, curious visitors take pictures. What's not to love about a place where the nightlife revolves around sugar and flour?

(Addendum: Don't miss the amazingly fresh mahi mahi tacos from the Molokai Little Grass Shack truck parked in the middle of Kaunakakai Tuesdays through Fridays.)

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