Joan Wilder? The Joan Wilder?

In 1984, when Romancing the Stone came out, I was seven years old. We would go up to Jesse and Jeremy's house and all watch this movie over and over again. This movie, along with Calvin and Hobbes and Superfudge, are among the most influential pieces of mass media from my childhood.

Given that, it was so absolutely fantastic to be transported to the mudslides and wild jungle of Joan Wilder's Columbia a couple of weeks ago. Ok, so really, it was a hike along the Na Pali coast in Kauai, but it looked and felt like the scenes from the movie. Life very rarely imitates the movies so its thrilling when it actually happens.


I'd like to say that the trip was full of dangerous adventure, villains in hot pursuit, high speed chases, drama, scantily clad women, raging waterfalls to be forged, wild pigs and chickens roaming through the village, and biting witty dialogue, but the speed limit on the one State road around the Island never tops 50, so the chases were certainly not high speed.


The rest of it, however, lived up to the expectations. The dialogue was perhaps not as witty as one might hope (it was a family trip, after all), but certainly was less corny than something scripted in the 80s. The chickens roaming through the hills are apparently so inbred that their internal clocks malfunction and the roosters crowed at all hours of the day and night. The drama was perhaps less romantic and life threatening (it was a family trip, after all), but the women certainly were scantily clad. I kept looking around for Danny diVito.

And the Kauai trip surpassed a Columbian jungle adventure in quite a few respects: no snakes, no crocs, and many many more mai tais. (Oh man, there was one mai tai that was sooo good.) Sadly, we returned [well, I could stop the sentence right there, actually] with a few sunburns, mosquito bites, and drunken tales, but no emerald. We'll have to try again next time.