The LEGEND of SHAKA GEAR

Legend has it that long long ago a young skilled sea voyager named Hawai’I Loa discovered a very magical piece of land. This island was blessed with fine powerdery sand, abundant fruit trees, vegetables, coconut palms and plenty of wild boars. He had never seen such a beautiful paradise.

For several weeks he hiked in and around the island trying to map out all of the beautiful spots because he know he would settle there with his family and friends. One day he noticed a stranged shaped mountainous glowing rock sitting high above the trees in the middle of the island.

He tried to climb up the strange glowing rock but after a few hours his feet became very hot. Soon they became swollen and started to burn and crack. He was forced to return to the beach where he could soothe his feet by wrapping them in salty seaweed.

After a week of letting his feet heal he tried again. He made it a bit further up the rocky terrain but once again his feet started to burn. They grew even more swollen and turned fiery red. He concluded that his feet were being punished for climbing up the island’s sacred rock, therefore a new rule was made for this island. No man was to attempt to climb up the sacred hot rock.

Many, many years later his teenage son Maui was swimming under a beautiful waterfall with his girlfriend when he spotted the same mystical glowing rock high above the trees.

He told his father that he was going to climb to the strange rock the next day and bring a piece back to prove his great strength. His father warned him about what would happen if he tried to conquer the forbidden area.

Maui was a very cunning warrior who couldn’t resist a challenge so he decided to make protective dressings for his feet out of woven palm leaves. Inside the protective dressings he lined them with seaweed. The dressings looked a bit crude and they made a wet squishing noise when he walked but he knew they would help him with his climb. The other young islanders started to laugh at him and told him he was crazy. He didn’t care about the teasing, he was going to conquer the mountain and prove his great strength.

He climbed for hours up the steep terrain. The ground started changing, there was hot steam rising from cracks in the rock. The sky started to change a stormy dark gray. This worried Maui but his dressings were keeping his feet cool so he kept going. He could hear bubbling starting to come from the ground. His dressings were starting to glow red from the heat.

As he got closer to the strange rock the mountain started to shake and roar, the sky started to thunder. He could see that the strange rock looked just like a demon’s face with an open fiery mouth. The staff that he was hiking with started to burn on the bottom so he climbed faster. His dressings glowed even more hot and the seaweed lining was starting to dry, causing his feet to feel very uncomfortable, but he kept climbing faster and faster.

Finally he reached the sinister faced glowing rock. Inside the fiery mouth was bubbling lava and a glowing shelf which supported two glowing jewels. They were the most amazing things he had ever seen. He reached into the rock’s fiery mouth and tried to pick up the jewels but they scorched his fingertips.

He didn’t know how he would get them back to his village to prove that he had conquered the mountain. Then an idea came to him. He would scoop each jewel with the dressings from each foot. He knew he would burn his feet by taking them off but figured he could take the heat if he ran down the mountain fast enough.

He removed his foot dressings while shaking in tremendous burning pain. Then, with a quick swing he scooped the two glowing jewels out of the demon’s mouth. At the same moment there was a loud, thunderous snap that came from the sky and then all of a sudden, everything just stopped.

The mountain stopped shaking, the rumbling and lava subsided and the ground turned cold. The sky started to clear to a bright blue and everything seemed calm again. But then Maui noticed the dressings were starting to glow differently, they went from orange, to green, to brown, to black and then to red, to purple and yellow, and then finally blue. The dressings felt very different as well, they became very, very soft and it seemed like the woven palm leaves had fused together into a spongy, bubbly light form. The jewels inside finally stopped changing colors but then slowly dissolved into the dressings.

Maui was disappointed that they were gone but then placed the transformed dressings back on his feet. To his surprise his burnt soles magically healed and the new dressings formed perfectly to his feet. He had never felt anything so nice...