Stranded…in Hawaii?!
My name is Pearl Jones and I live in Los Angeles, California. I am leaving for Lanikai, Hawaii for my cousin's wedding even though she lives in San Diego she decided to have her wedding in Lanikai. I mean come on why? It is so far from home so I will be getting on a plane because I don't have a boat. The reason for this is because I am the wedding planner and maid of honor. I thought that she would ask her sister to be her maid of honor, but because I go and see her every month she decided to choose me to be maid of honor. So far I have packed my bags and got all my supplies to set up the wedding, and an emergency kit just in case something goes wrong. I need to get there two months ahead of the wedding day so that I can figure out the setting of the wedding. I get my bags and supplies and head out of the house to go to the Airport for my flight at 3:30pm. When I get there, I have about fifteen minutes before my flight so I go to where you board the plane so that I am comfortable. Fifteen minutes later and the plane is off, it takes about nine hours to get there so by the time we land it is one in the morning. I know, early right? I get a quick hotel room to rest up before heading to my vacation home for the remainder of my stay.
At 10:00 am I wake up and get ready to rent a car so I can drive up to my vacation home. I am driving on Pali Highway on my way to my vacation home on Mokulua Dr. While I am on the 61 it starts to rain and hail pretty badly, so badly in fact that I can barely see through the window of the Honda that I am renting. Then suddenly all I could see were the headlights of a semi-truck heading straight for me. I swerve to the right and my car runs off the road I barely get out of the way I instantly realize that I have over corrected and my car runs of the road. Though I was able to get out of the way enough that I didn't get rammed into headfirst but I get clipped in the rear corner hard enough to get me and the car thrown off of the road into the rainforest near Mount Konahuani. I am also able to keep myself from getting too hurt while the car rolls into the rainforest by keeping completely still only bending my head as the roof of the started to get crunched up. I get out of my car only to see that I am nowhere near the highway I was once on and that my phone says that it is about twelve in the afternoon meaning I was knocked out for about an hour and a half. Luckily I have the emergency kit that I packed before leaving the safety of my home in LA.
I have to find way to survive in the rainforest until rescued. In my emergency kit, I have a change of clothes for the wilderness because currently I am wearing a loose blouse, a skirt and, heels. So, I change into my hiking boots, cargo pants and, tight long sleeved shirt. I have enough food for at least three days and four bottles of water, plus a first aid kit. Before anything I treat any and all of my injuries so that they don't get infected; which would be bad in the rainforest. I also have matches, a lighter, a book that tells you about plants that are poisonous and plants that are edible along with a book about rainforest animals. So, I grab all of my things and start hiking to find a phone signal along with an open area to make any kind of signal. According to, my phone I have walked about three miles from where I began and it is now 1:00pm I take a quick break to eat a little bit of food and a water break. Then I continue to walk at about 5:00 my phone battery dies so I decide to find or build some shelter I end up building a little shelter using some big pieces of drift wood and some palm leaves.
It is morning and I am up and walking only stopping to drink water or use the bathroom. At the end of the day I find a little hollow at the bottom of a tree making sure that it is not a home to an animal I use it as shelter for the night. It has been about three days that I have been out here and I have run out of food though I still have two bottles of water left. I have to go scavenging for food before I can do anything else so I look in my book of plants and am able to find some food to eat for today but I want to make sure that I have enough for a couple days at least. Suddenly I hear rustling in the bushes near me I am now on guard being careful to make sure that I do not make any sudden movements. Then I hear growling and I immediately know what kind of animal I am dealing with, unfortunately for me I did not think to pack any weapons only the wedding supplies, clothes, hair products and my emergency kit. The animal is finally done playing around and decides to come out. I look around for anything that I can use as a weapon I see a heavy looking branch out of the corner of my eye and I slowly edge towards it as the mountain lion follows my every move with its eyes, as I reach the branch it pounces. I quickly grab the branch and swing hitting it in the stomach. I start to back away as it is starting to get up and attack me again. I hit it again so that I can get a little farther from it. As it attacks again I manage to hit it with the branch and move out of the way so that it launches itself into a tree and while it is dazed I get an idea, I grab my lighter and a can of hairspray. Then it attacks again and I fire up the lighter and spray the hairspray at it burning it which also killed it after a while. So I now have food for a few days. It has been about six days now and I have buried the mountain lion and paid my respects to it because if it hadn't attacked me I probably wouldn't have survived this long. I occasionally find myself wondering what my darling cousin is thinking right about now would she be worried sick or is she so in love with her fiancé that she doesn't know that I am gone However, before I can go too deep in thought a strange noise usually snaps me out of it. By now I have left all my wedding supplies behind because it was weighing me down but I used some of it to make a carrier for the food that I gather along the way. So right now, I am scavenging again. I managed to use a hair elastic, a stick in the shape of a Y and a few stones to make a slingshot so that I can get birds for food, far I have got two birds. I have a lot of plants to eat.
As I am scavenging I find a big open area so I quickly gather things to make a smoke fire I need dry tinder, kindling, fuel, green (live) wood, branches, leaves, lighter, matches, and a big palm leaf. I start by removing anything that might catch fire in the area then I put the tinder down then the kindling and wood. After that is done I put the green wood around it like a log cabin about two to three feet high. Then I put the green branches and leaves on top of the dry wood and I light the tinder and as it is burning I wave the big palm leaf to get the smoke out in the air for people to see. Then I get to work by making a big arrow made of stones pointing to the area where my camp is going to be and every half hour I check on the fire adding more wood or relighting it. The next morning, I wake up to people yelling "over here!" and I feel safe finally because I know I am being been rescued. Then out of the blue I fainted probably from exhaustion but when I wake up my darling cousin is above me crying because she was worried.
A few weeks had passed since then and my cousin's wedding went off without a hitch and I left Hawaii felling proud of myself for surviving in the wild for a week.