Being pretty new here (I’ll hit my two year Hawaii anniversary in February) there is still a lot of things I have not yet done.

I mean of course I’ve hit a few beaches and done a few things but not nearly as much as I would like to do.

This past summer was actually the last time I’ve ever been hiking and I’m sure if I had gone with Keawe Adventures I probably would have gone back hiking.

So my very best friend came in to town from Texas and we had planned this week long trip filled with beach days and hiking adventures. The first day we decided to tackle the big one, Koko Head. I had been before but I guess this time I wanted to be all big and bad and hike super fast and get up to the top. BAD IDEA.

If you’ve never done Koko Head it is 1,048 steps of pure torture bliss. The views are incredible and generally on a good day its breezy enough to not feel like your dying sweating. However this day was exceptionally hot. We made our way up in a miraculous 45 minutes (which is a big accomplishment for two girls who’s idea of exercise is opening wine bottles). Once there we took selfies galore for about 20 minutes and then made our way back down.

Going down is always easier and we thought everything was going great. We walked back to the car and started our hour drive home and then the worst thing happened. My very best friend who had come all the way to Hawaii for adventures had gotten heat exhaustion, not enough water and too much heat caused her to start throwing up and we had to pull over in H1 5pm traffic so she could recover. It was not a fun time. Needless to say I haven’t been hiking since.

Now here’s where Keawe Adventures comes in. Had I listened to Kahana, one of the wonderful hiking tour guides at Keawe adventures, we would have been much better off.

After interning here for about 2 weeks I got to talking with Kahana about Hiking tours he does including Diamond Head, Makapuu, Manoa Falls and many others at undisclosed locations. He was telling me the three most important things to remember when hiking.

1.) STAY ON THE TRAIL

I mean you know what they say *curiosity killed the cat*

2.) NEVER GO ALONE

I’m going to safely say this is never go without a tour guide like Kahana because after telling him this story he was like, yeah sometimes you get so caught up in hiking and the views and you forget to drink water and that’s where I come in.

3.) EMBRACE THE JOURNEY NOT THE DESTINATION

This was probably the most important one that I thought anyway. We spent the whole time trying to just get up the dang mountain that if we had just embraced the journey and enjoyed ourselves we probably wouldn’t have had that traumatic of an experience.

Overall, lesson learned. Always ask Kahana to go Hiking with you so you don’t get dehydrated and die pass out.

– Becca