CJ Hill MDI Contributor
In the summer of 1976, I went to Kauai with my cousin Peter, his friend Steve from college and a coworker Dave. This was when Pete was doing research doing diving for the Scripps Institute.
We hiked the Napali Trail used by ancient tribes and camped in the Kalalau Valley for 10 days. Three miles wide and six miles deep, this was an incredible adventure.
On the second day, in the first thing in the morning, we decided to drop some LSD that Pete had brought. Dave was appointed as our guide so we wouldn’t get lost, and the fact he didn’t take the LSD was his only qualification.
The trip itself was very mellow, not scary. The colors were very vibrant, everything was moving. I felt like I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to take it all in! The red earth was multicolored. I felt like I was a very important part of the whole movie – vital to our outcome.
Soon off the trail we were in a thicket following a trail to nowhere. We fired Dave as our guide and somehow found our way back to the main trail. As the acid took full effect, continuing through the jungle everything was so alive and lush.
Out of nowhere – in either all of our mind’s eye or appearing in reality – a hippie girl came down the trail naked up to the waste wearing only a loin cloth. The young lady seemed to have appeared, like magic when we saw her on the trail. Her sumptuous breasts were as ripe as papayas dangling in a fishnet bag over her shoulder. Sometimes these hallucianigns can make you quite creative.
She never spoke or even looked at us, and we were so high that none of us knew what to say to her. So we just let her pass with our jaws dropped and mouths wide open.
She was probably one of the leftovers that the state had not cleared out a couple years prior when they used marijuana cultivation as an excuse to relocate a few hundred hippies living deep in the valley like Robinson Curuso families.
The jungle exploration hike was amazing later that day, full of sights and sounds, unique only to Kuaui’s jungle.
We never did find any real papayas, and we never saw that girl again. We got back to camp to experience an explosive sunset with bright oranges, reds and pinks mixed into many other colors. We spent the evening looking at shooting stars with no city lights to interfere.
Thankfully, a good trip.
