Maui- Road to Hana

The next day we spent driving the Road to Hana. 

This was a gorgeous drive!  It was also an annoying drive.  There are 620 curves and 59 one-lane bridges.  It's about 52 miles.  I had thought that most of the sites mentioned on the CD we were listening to (lent to us by Carol) and the book we were reading from (borrowed from our Airbnb) would be marked or have fairly obvious points of entrance, etc.  But this was not the case.  The first spot did.  And the State Parks did.  But otherwise it was guesswork and there are only occasional small areas to pull off the road and turning around is tricky.  There were also a few things closed because it was a Saturday.  Things out there near Hana are hard to get to.  This one road is the only access.  I can imagine it's a commuters nightmare.  Living out there can't be easy either.  Even trash removal seems tricky.

Here's what we saw.  First stop, Waikomoi Nature Trail

It was a short little trail and a bit anti-climactic, but the jungle is pretty cool.

Next stop, Garden of Eden.  This is someone's property.  This guy has been working on this for 30 years.  There's tons of vegetation that was really cool.  The Jurassic Park Rock, views of the road and a couple waterfalls.

 Rainbow Eucalyptus trees!

 It's way down there so it looks small, but it's there.  Jurassic Park rock.

 

 This cardinal was so LOUD!  And cute.  It was bright red, but this is the best I got before it flew away.

We spent quite a bit of time here since we had to pay to get in.  But I was anxious to get so some of the other awesome sites.

We stopped for the view of the Ke'anae Peninsula, and then drove down into the town.  The coast was so pretty down there!  Oh, before we got to Ke'anae we took a side road down to this small black sand beach.  Cool!  I think it's call Honomanu Bay.

Now Ke'anae

Ching's Pond.  The book or CD (I can't remember the difference anymore) said that people swim in it.  But it was muddy looking and not appealing.  Cool though.

Upper Waikani Falls aka Three Bears Waterfall.  The CD raved about these falls saying it's definitely worth it to hike down into it.  Nobody else was going down to it.  And it did look a little sketchy to get down, but we decided to try.  It's just slippery when muddy, and it's almost muddy.  But it wasn't very scary.  Just the first step.  It was worth it!  It's so fun being up by a waterfall, especially one this powerful!

Pua'a Ka'a State Park.  Pretty, mostly just another waterfall.  I'm sure we could've swam in it.  There were lots of times we could've swam if it was warmer.  It wasn't cold, but it was nice.  Just not hot.

Hanawi Falls

Makapipi Falls, standing on top of the waterfall looking down over it.  The CD/book said that a guy leaned too far over and fell to his death in this waterfall back in 2012.  And it also said that people have sat on the wall that we are sitting on ^^ and fallen backwards (though I don't think you would die from that one).  I wonder how many people die from stupidity in Hawaii every year.

 Same waterfall, just down the road a bit so you can see it.

The CD raved about all this food and we were excited to stop and try it.  We had brought a cooler (that was provided by our Airbnb which was awesome) with snacks.  But wanted to try fish tacos and breadfruit at the stop in Nahiku.  There was a row of food trucks with a lot of signs about tacos and yummy things.  But the good ones were not open on Saturdays!  Boo.  Ryan got some shrimp and fish and chips.  We had to wait for quite a while for it.  And there are stray cats begging, lol.  I decided to hold out for something else, with the understanding that I might not find anything else.  But I had plenty of veggies in our cooler.  And these:

After food, we stopped at the Lava Tubes at Maui Cave Adventures.  This was cool, but we couldn't get any decent pictures of how cool because it was so dark in there.  They said they think only half of the cave has been explored.  Because the rest of it isn't owned by the guy that runs this so they don't have permission to explore the rest.

At some point we got to Hana :)  I think this sign was right before the food stop.

Wai'anapanapa State Park.  This was BEAUTIFUL!!  The contrast of the blue water with white crashing waves on all the black lava rock.  I loved it.  And the black sand here was more like tiny smooth pebbles that felt amazing on your feet. 

Kaihalulu Beach aka Red Sand Beach (aka hidden 'nude' beach).  There was a little hike to get to this beach but what a beautiful hidden cove it is!!  I could've spend an afternoon at both Wai'anapanapa and this Kaihalulu beach.  Just beautiful and peaceful even though there were plenty of other tourists at both places.

Wailua Falls.  This was a big one on the side of the road.  Quick stop.

O'hea Gulch aka Seven Sacred Pools.  When I first started reading about the Road to Hana, this was what I saw and what I knew I wanted to spend some time doing.  It looked so awesome!  It also talked about a hike to another waterfall and I really, really wanted to do that.  BUT when we got there it was after 4 and we talked to some girls just getting back from the hike and they said we wouldn't make it before dark.  Bummer!!  But I wasn't AS disappointed because it just wasn't warm enough to swim.  But I do like hikes.  And waterfalls.  Love waterfalls actually.  I want to see all the waterfalls.  And swim under as many as possible.  But that's more fun when it's actually warm.  So we walked down the short trail to the Seven Sacred Pools instead.  It was really cool with all the little pools and water running everywhere, but it was hard to get a good picture because you need a birds eye view.  

This was our last stop.  It was late, about to get dark, it had taken us ALL DAY to get to this point.  And the idea was that we were supposed to then turn around and drive back all those miles and twists and one lane bridges along with all the other tourists.  But there was a back road that went the rest of the way around the island.  I had heard mixed things.  Some people said it was a sketchy road with part of it unpaved.  Other people said it's fine especially in a Jeep.  My friend Kelli said they did it on motorcycles.  It seemed like a better option, and shorter.  Because Kihei was on the southwest end of the island and we were now on the southeast end.  See, here's the map.  We were down by #330.  

But what I didn't realize, is that you can't go straight to Kihei.  There are no roads that take you down there.  The road we were on was high up on the mountain and there was no way to go down other than going further north.  So in the long run, we might have not saved any miles, we still think it was the better option because there was a lot less traffic (we assume) than there would have been the other way.  And a though the road was literally 1 or 1.5 lane for some of it, there was very little oncoming traffic and only a handful of those one-lane bridges.  We were able to go fairly fast because there weren't as many other cars on that road.  Ryan and I both agree if we had to do it again, we would go the back way again.

It's really unfortunate that the road to get to those awesome places is so inconvenient.  It would be fun to spend more time at some of them.  One lady we talked to in Maui said she had a camper and drove down and just camped there.  Not sure about the camping part, but that's one way to make it more bearable and be able to see more things.  I wonder how long it would take to drive to Wai'anapanapa without stopping.  

Fun day!  But a bit exhausting, especially for Ryan who had to drive the whole way!