When you stand in the Kualoa Ranch valley, flanked by rain-eroded cliffs and chlorophyll-saturated foliage, the sense that you are on "The Island" is palpable.  After wandering the grounds of the ranch, moving from location to location, another sense comes screaming through: getting the right locations for Lost isn't just all in a days work for the crew, it's an absolute passion.

"We'll have to walk a little bit to get to this next location, but it's a big one." Hawaii's Ed Kos, Proprietor of Hummer Tours tells me.  The walk is preceded by a bumpy ride over some fairly rough terrain.  Ed's Hummer's aren't just for looks here.  It's a far cry from impassable, but certainly not the kind of cushy traveling one might expect for a television production.

By the time we reach the location, Ed's white Hummer H2 looks like a Matchbox car, and I'm out of breath from carrying my Hurley-sized frame up the slick grass.  Kos, a burley retired Marine, hasn't even broken a sweat.  We arrive at a familiar patch of lawn, it is where the ambush took place in the second season finale.  He points out where the Pearl station tubes were and tells me how he found a couple of them, they were built from the remnants of two-liter soda bottles with a single cover sheet of the Dharma notebook cover curled within.  I'm in geek heaven.

A short ways away is an earthy outcropping.  The rich volcanic soil like coffee grounds.  At the top of a crest is the remnants of the bridge that Hurley and Charlie crossed in the episode "Numbers."  It is bizarre to look around and realize that not only was there never a gorge below that bridge, but there was never actually another side to it. "They put up a scaffolding over here," Ed tells me, motioning to the right. "and camouflaged it.  Then suspended the bridge in between."

Ed then motions me to the left a little and opens his scrap book.  In this book are screengrabs from various films and television shows that have filmed on the island,  He pulls up a picture of Boone and Shannon scaling what appears to be a cliff.  Turns out the very same spot that stood in for the draw bridge stood in for the side of a cliff in the pilot. Ed tells me he has found a lot of locations by comparing landmarks in the background of shots with those he passes every day in his tours, and on a few choice occasions he has even happened upon the crew doing their business.  But being a hardened Marine at the core, Ed's sense of honor won't give when it comes to divulging any of Lost's secrets.  I press him for a few details, and he declines citing "Professional respect."

This is part one, be on the look out for a photographic tour, and more Lost location trivia.  Thanks to Ed from Hummer Tours Hawaii.


- Jon Lachonis, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Images by Jon Lachonis.  Images from Lost Copyright ABC)