Thanksgiving Tragedy

Not long after we finished cleaning up after our first of the cook-once, eat-many turkey dinners, tragedy struck very nearby.  We were safely ensconced in our vacation rental, digesting our colorful supper, washed down with champagne in tumblers -- no wine glasses in this house -- all cozy and watching DVDs while a really hard rain came down outside, complete with thunder and lightning.

Just up the road, an older couple -- older than us, anyway --had just finished their Thanksgiving dinner at the only hotel in Hana, and then drove home to their more isolated Hana home to be caught in a flash flood that washed their SUV into a stream, and their bodies, it is suspected, into the ocean, something like 50-100 yards away.

The hotel staff had offered them a room for the night, but they decided to just go home.

There's a lesson here: if you are out on a dark and stormy night in an area where flash floods are not uncommon, and if the hotel staff says, "Have a night on us"...take it!  Old B&W horror movies to the contrary, a night on the house when the weather is raging might be a good idea.

When we drove out from Hana on Sunday, the road was still very wet and slick and greasy with fallen leaves, blocked by at least one rockslide, and compromised by crazy tourists driving too fast and inattentively. They were enjoying looking at the countless vigorous waterfalls in the jungle hillsides.  Weather reports say it rained two inches in one hour Thursday night. Beautiful, but water can be a deadly force.

Hana Highway One-Lane Bridge

Over Raging Stream

Monday morning update: they're still missing.  Very sad.  But as one of my blogging friends has pointed out to me regarding another matter, nature always wins.  Don't fight, don't gamble with Mother Nature!  Be a Taoist. Cooperate with her. Listen to your mother.