Life’s been hectic trying to prep for deployment so I have been MIA. Brian and I made our slow way back to Paia town and stopped at any spots we missed along the way. Which included a small arboretum and a couple more beaches. There happened to be a red sand beach nearby and the path started right outside our hotel room. It was a quick walk, but there were signs all over the place warning of landslides and it was raining… so we worked quickly. I really just wanted to be able to say I’ve seen a red, black, and green sand beach.
The arboretum had rainbow eucalyptus, but we have them in our backyard so… not so impressive. Ha.
We arrived in Paia Town around lunch, and there was no parking… so we stopped at this place called My Thai Maui and holy moly the food was amazing. I would fly back to Maui just to eat there again.
We still had time to kill before our flight so we visited Maui Ocean Center. 10/10 recommend! The have one of those tunnels through their tanks and the sting rays are HUGE. We felt a little too hurried to get back to the airport, I would’ve loved to spend more time here, but it was a great stop.
This was an experience to remember, driving the road to Hana. I’m glad we did it once but likely I won’t do it again without a tour guide.
I’m glad we ended up going back the way we came. I have heard the road gets worse past Haleakala, and that’s where we ran into the most trouble with other cars anyway. I will also add that I have not felt more unwanted in an area of Hawaii than here… some local drivers gave no craps about the tourists driving their road and showed it. All in all, a great last trip to fill my cup before Brian leaves.
I somehow managed to wake up early enough to catch the sunrise and even though it wasn’t all *that* spectacular, I’ll take it. Brian sat with me for a few minutes and then went back to bed, that was allowed. We lazily made our way to breakfast at the hotel and then hit the road to Haleakala National Park. The road to Hana back here gets way worse, incredibly. Significantly curvier and more narrow. Still a spot to pull over to catch a waterfall. This one is Wailua falls.
It was about a 20 minute ride to Haleakala. We then hiked the Pipiwai Trail, which I had incredibly high expectations for and was looking to be the highlight of the trip for me and I’m happy to report it far exceeded them.
About a half mile in you reach waterfall number 1. Again it had rained over night so there was an awesome flow.
You come across a really big Banyan tree a little bit further.
Another small-ish waterfall.
A beautiful bridge leading into a bamboo forrest with, you guessed it, another waterfall.
Then you treck for what had to have been 3/4 of a mile through a bamboo forrest. It was incredible and the wind made the sound of the bamboo so cool.
And eventually you get to this sky-high waterfall called Waimoku falls. Because of the recent rain I imagine the falls on the left started flowing.
The picture of course doesn’t do it justice but it’s 200′.
And we made our way back down stopping for more pics to savor the moments and to listen to the bamboo. So incredible!
Toward the start of the hike there’s another scenic loop that brings you to the Seven Sacred Pools. There are actually a lot more than that but chop it up to marketing to use a catchy name. The pictures, again, don’t do this justice. It’s really beautiful.
That about wrapped up Haleakala, so we made our way back to Wainapanapa State Park. We stopped at one beach somewhere and got a better pic of the offshore island. It has a coconut palm on top, it was rumored to be planted by a father who lost his son in a war and planted it in his memory.
On our way back things got dicier on the road- we were finally kinda opposing a lot of traffic since we got to Pipiwai early since we were right in Hana and left relatively early. So we encountered a ton of cars going back, and the parking lot was nearly full. There was one point where these 2 20 YOs and us were stuck and they refused to go in reverse. Brian claims he was in the right and went through first, I was too busy looking around… we somehow managed to squeeze by but after that I pretty much made the decision we’d go back the way we came out of Hana as opposed to completing the circle.
Anyway, that was our only mishap, crazily and thankfully. Besides other people clearly not yielding… We found our way to Wainapanapa!
The Shaka app raved about this park, but to me it was kinda like eh just another black sand beach. There were some cool features, like this rock arch and lava tube to the ocean. Those people were in there for at least five minutes trying to take the perfect Instagram photo, so I just took a photo of them and left.
We did a walk around the coast for a bit, but we were already a bit tired from all the hiking earlier so we didn’t do the full thing. Just enough to get a taste and a better view of the bay.
And another small black sand inlet.
We also really weren’t wearing the right shoes for a long walk. So we called it and it was already around 3pm at this point and went back to the hotel to enjoy drinks at the pool.
This trip feels a bit intimidating to write about because we did so much but I told myself I’m not going for perfection here. First, Brian was in (a sub in) Alaska for the last month or so. He did get a chance to get off the boat to see Alaska and was able to call me. On one call he told me to cancel the trip (at this time the hotel and car booking). Later that same day he told me not to cancel it. The wise sub spouse I’m becoming only cancelled the hotel because it was the priciest part of our trip. I was easily able to rebook. However, I did wait to book our flights, which meant needing to book first class to get the times we want (now, mind you, the flight time to Maui is ~21 minutes, so the upgrade was $20/ticket and includes unlimited Mai Tais). It also ended up being expensive. I am very grateful we’re able to make these decisions. This was our vacation budget for the year anyway since he’ll be gone.
On to the trip! The basic game plan was to do the Road to Hana and back over the course of three days. We got in our rental car (a Jeep) and were on our way by 11:30am on a Sat. We used this app called the Shaka Guide which gives you a driving audio tour and it turned out to be an excellent choice. It works off GPS and guides you to all the best stops on the Road to Hana.
Also, to preface, I was a little nervous that this trip would be like… less than exciting? “Pretty beaches? I get that on Oahu…” “Black sand beach and lava tubes? Saw that on big island…” “Waterfalls? That’s rookie Hawaii…” But I have to say the act of doing the Road to Hana in and of itself was an adventure and made for a great time.
Starting at 11am with no rush to get to Hana with our check in being at 4pm was the best thing. We beat the morning rush of everyone heading out down the road, and everything we wanted to see was open already. The first stop we made was at Ho’okipa Beach park where the draw was to watch surfers and wind surfers. We ended up seeing the biggest turtles I’ve ever seen and a LOT of them.
There are probably like ten turtles in this picture. The size is deceiving, but of course we couldn’t get too close.
We next visited twin falls. I’ll say that everything in Maui was a little more… rugged? There wasn’t any mapping or indication of where to go really. So truly it wasn’t completely obvious what the twin falls are… the pictures online are completely different than these falls. We did go after a rainfall and some part of the trail was closed due to washout, so we could’ve missed some of the hike. Nonetheless, here is a pic of the ones we did see.
Next we stopped at Waikamoi Nature Trail. This stop was definitely a we could’ve “left it”. However, you’ll find that after being in a car on a windy road for a period of time getting out to stretch is a nice idea. Here’s a single picture from our walk.
Next was the Garden of Eden. This was a definite highlight because you get a great overlook of a waterfall, a small glimpse of the Jurassic Park rock (Brian was disappointed), and a cool overhead of a bridge. Most people start the road too early to get to stop here. We bought some banana bread here… it turns out this was our first of a few places to take advantage of this popular Road to Hana snack.
Then we stopped at some lookout, but I’m currently not finding it on the map.
And I like this picture of the road hugging the ocean/rock. This is what it’s like for a lot of the drive.
Then to Keanae lookout, which just “meh”.
Well we made it halfway! We ate a banana bread sundae here. Yum!
Then a Waialua Overlook where we saw the Coral Miracle Church. Essentially they used coral to bind together the stones to make the church, however it was painstakingly slow because there wasn’t a lot of washed up coral. Well, a storm came by and washed up a ton of coral. They finished building the church, then a few days later the storm swept the unused coral back out to sea. It’s a little white dot in this next pic essentially, but cool story!
And a cool look back into the valley.
There were so many waterfalls just pouring down along the mountains, I honestly couldn’t tell you which this one was.
We skipped any further stops and finally got to our hotel at just about 4pm. Actually, we tried to visit Wainapanapa State Park but it rained! So we moved on to the hotel. This was the view from our lanai.
We checked in and in short order went to the one restaurant open past 6pm for some well earned grub. We hadn’t eaten a real meal since breakfast! There are very little substantial food places in-between Paia town and Hana. The Shaka guide tells you to get something to go in Paia town to eat somewhere along the way. Thankfully we had a big breakfast and two stops worth of banana bread. Dinner was just meh but it did the trick.
Phew, I’m definitely tired after writing this. I’ll probably take a breather and get back to day 2 and 3 some other time.
