Smuggling Surfers
In this week’s excerpt from Maui Wowee, I wanna tell you a little about the smuggling surfers of Maui. I met them through my grow partner Ray, who ran with a fast crowd. And by fast, I mean traveling by private jet fast. I first met the guys while still living in Kona. We’d formed a mutual admiration society. They loved the Kona Gold I grew, and I loved the hash and cocaine they smuggled. Recreationals aside, what I loved most about the Maui’s corps of smuggling surfers were their stories.
I’ll share one in a moment, but first, check out this wave from Jaws, home of the world’s biggest waves, and just down the coast from our rainforest home in Happy Valley. This photo doesn’t really do Jaws justice, but the waves there get over 60 feet high. And yet, the pro surfers I knew had balls titanic enough to look at them, and think: All right! I can’t wait to get out there. You’d think with balls that huge, they’d sink like a stone. After watching my friends ride waves like this, I realized crossing a border with a ton of felonies was nothing for someone with that much courage. Or was that insanity?
I was eating breakfast out on the lanai, wondering what to do for the day, when Ray said, “Hey, Mikey, Panda just called. He’s got reservations for three nights in Haleakala. Wanna go?”
A rhetorical question if I ever heard one. On an island loaded with fantastic places, Haleakala Crater was probably Maui’s most distinctive feature. Biggest, anyway. Other islands had killer beaches with great surf. They also had rainforests, waterfall pools, and volcanoes. But none had a volcano with cabins to camp in. Haleakala, apparently some kind of vampire volcano, was sleeping, not dead, no doubt waiting to barbecue unwary visitors one surprising morning.
“Of course I wanna go. Who else is going?”
“Me and Flower, the Panda and Jewels, Hagar and Lily, Heavy Chevy and Cherry, and . . .”
“Outtasight. When we going?”
This would be fun. The Panda, a big blond surfer with constant great vibes, his petite and pretty wife Jewels, and a feisty madman with a red neck called Hagar lived in Haiku in a big plantation manager’s house. So did Lily when not fighting with Hagar. Chevy, curly-haired and glazed of eye, and Cherry (his gorgeous hapa-haole (half-white/half-Japanese girlfriend) lived on some acreage tucked below Makawao in Kaluanui Gulch, and these guys loved to socialize. So, after catching waves at Baldwin Beach and a lunch in nearby Paia, Ray and Flower and I would head up-country to one of their houses. As smugglers typically did, they had da kine stash. You name it: excellent pot and hash, pure cocaine, the finest LSD, vintage wines, and well, let’s just say, if it was worth getting high on, they had it.
But hell, so did we, and for me, the highlight of our visits was listening to their outrageous stories.
Like the time the Panda said, “Just brought this back from Peru yesterday. You lived there, Mikey, lemme know what ya think.”
“Peru? Yesterday? We just saw you last week.”
“They’ve got these things called jets,” explained Panda, as if to a child.
“Any problems with Customs?” asked Chevy, probably for future reference.
“We did have that little hiccup in Tahiti,” said Jewels.
“Wait. . .” I asked, confused, “you were in Tahiti, too?”
“Sure,” said Panda, “all part of the routing, brah. And I hadn’t been there since prison, so how could I resist stopping off, catching a few waves? You know what I mean, right?”
“Of course, who wouldn’t?” Besides me. “What was the trouble?”
Panda chuckled. “Seems we didn’t offer the Customs guy enough cash.”
Jewels shook her head. “What do you mean, we?” To the rest of us, she added, “I told him a grand per bag would do the trick, same as usual, but you know the Panda, he’s all business when it comes to negotiations.”
“Hey, come on,” he protested, “we had six bags full of felonies. Can you blame me for wanting a group discount?”
None of the other smugglers could.
“Then our luggage got lost for a day in Toronto,” said Panda, laughing at the idea. “Now that was a little sketchy.”
A little? These smugglers had ice water in their veins.
“Toronto?” I showed them I was no slouch at geography. “That’s a long way from Tahiti.”
“From Hawaii, too,” agreed the Panda.
The way he said it? I kinda felt like a nerd.
“Right. So, what were you doing in Toronto?”
The Panda gave me an incredulous look. “Isn’t that how sneak your loads back into the States?”
“Uh. . .”
“Exactly. And then, after all that traveling, we almost got popped right here in Haiku. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
“I can think of other words. What happened?”
“We hadn’t been home ten minutes before my parole officer was banging on the door for our monthly appointment. Any earlier, he’d have seen us drive up with all those suitcases.” Panda slapped his knee. “Can you imagine my embarrassment?”
“Not to mention the prison time,” joked Jewels.
“Heh heh, yeah. I barely had time to change out of my new Bora Bora t-shirt.”
Since the Panda was on parole and confined to Maui, the Parole Board might frown if they knew he was flying around the world with suitcases full of felonies. Same with the folks who ran the Federal Courts. Panda, only a couple years older than me, had a million stories like that. The smuggling surfers led an exciting life compared to pot growers. Or, well, almost anybody except James Bond.
Maui Wowee isn’t published yet, but if you wanna get started with the Senor Bueno Travel Adventure series, grab book 1 in the series, Breaking Good.
Just click here to signup for your Free Copy