The first day of our trip that we could actually sleep in a little if we wanted, and we actually stayed in bed until almost 8am! Ahh, vacation! I'll leave out the breakfast on the lanai this time. Oops, just put it in didn't I?
The plan for the day is to give ourselves a little break from all the hiking and snorkeling, so we decided to take a drive around the north end of the island. This trip is generally ignored in the guide books, but it is still a very pretty drive. We managed to miss pretty much all of the 'attractions' that the guidebook did list, but we had a nice drive anyway.
We made it a point to stop at just about every scenic viewpoint on the way. The road follows the steep cliffs of the coast and is somewhat narrow (single lane for a lot of it), but there are lots of turnouts. There isn't nearly as much traffic as the road to Hana, and since pretty much all the tourists were going the same direction that we were, we never really had to back up to let anyone pass. Each turnout had a magnificent view of the coastline. We had a great bird's eye view of Honolua bay (tomorrow's snorkeling target) from one stop.
We then wound our way up and down cliffs and into steep valleys (Maui is called the "Valley Island"). As we were reaching the hairpin turn at the base of one valley, there was a hand painted "Slow" sign. I slowed, thinking there must have been a house with kids or something, but as we rounded the bend, there was a pickup truck with a bunch of Rastas hanging out, and as we inched by one called out (in a very lyrical tone) "Maui Wowee!) as another held up a large bud of pot. I laughed about this for miles afterwards!
Turnouts along the road gave great views of crashing surf on rocks or beaches below (or on surfers below). We passed through one small town in the crook of another gorgeous valley with a spectacular little bay and huge rock formation jutting out into the ocean. Very picturesque. The guidebook pointed out the two churches in town, but more visible were the half dozen little snack stands in people's driveways.
About 1/2 way around the island we arrived at one of our goals for the day- The Waihee ridge trailhead. This is a boy scout camp with a trail that leads 3 miles (uphill!) along the crest between steep valleys. We had promised to take it easy, but it looked to pretty to pass up, so we started the steep hike. The trail is beautiful! This side of the island is very very wet, so everything was bright green. As we got higher on the crest we could see for miles along the steep valleys heading into the center of the island. There were waterfalls visible in the distance, but none on the path. We heard lots of birds, but didn't see any. By the time we were as high as the clouds were we decided to call it quits. We had our pack lunch then headed back down, stopping to take pictures of all the pretty flowers and ferns on the way. By the time we got to the car we were ready for a nap, but we still had a long ways to go.
Since we were passing by anyway, we decided to drive into the I`ao (eeyow!) valley to see the I`ao needle. The valley was the site of the big battle in which Kamehameha the great defeated the local chiefs and finally united all the islands under one leadership. It's said that the river ran red with blood, but it might have been those little red shrimp I mentioned earlier. The valley has a huge karst called the needle which rises more than 2,000 feet straight up from the valley floor. The location is quite spectacular and accessible, but that is also its downfall- the place is tourist central. A steady stream of tour buses vomit hundreds of tourists in the parkinglot, and they walk the paved path to the viewpoint, snap their picture, loop back on more paved path, get on the buses and repeat. It's pretty hideous. Of course, that just meant that we did almost the same thing on our own, since there was really no way to just wander and explore as we prefer to do.
No rest for the weary. We REALLY needed a cup of coffee by now, but the exit of the I`ao valley runs right into the Bailey museum, so we hoped they had a coffee shop and pulled in. We had to go to this museum because it was listed in the guidebooks as having the largest collection of pre-contact artifacts on the island. The museum is in the house of the first missionaries that came to Maui (not the Bailey's, they are just the famous ones from somewhat later). The house itself is an odd thing, a white stucco mishmash that grew up over the course of a century. It certainly sticks out on the island. We were greeted warmly by the woman at the cash box ($4 for adults), and she told us a bit about the Baileys and the museum then turned us loose. There is a room that has Bailey's paintings (pretty good) and his epic poetry (pretty bad). There were two rooms that included display cases of pre-contact artifacts (only a few dozen in all, and this is the biggest collection on the island!?), such as tapa cloth, fishing gear (including an ingenious octopus lure), feather and shell decorations, etc. There wasn't too much on interpretation or history though unfortunately. The two upstairs rooms were more or less like they were in the Bailey's day, with nice Koa wood beds, armoires and benches, as well as some other artifacts, quilts etc.
Bailey Museum |
On the way out of the museum I saw a poster for archaeology week, which of course we had missed, and mentioned it to the woman at the desk. She proceeded to tell us all about an archaeology student who had come out and done a few small test excavations by the house, and gave us a tour of the grounds. I hold some sort of mystical attraction for women of a certain age, and this sort of thing happens to me all the time. In the gift shop the two retired volunteers also behaved in the same friendly, chatty way. I think we ended up spending considerably more time than average here.
Enough was enough, so it was definitely time to head back to the condo and make some coffee! We resisted any other attractions on the last of the drive (the Tropical Plantation tour was about it) and went straight back for some recovery time. Of course, by the time we recovered it was sunset. One of my co-workers from the GRI just happened to be in Maui this week as well (honeymoon), so we agreed to meet on Wednesday at a Luau. A good part of the evening was spent on the phone finding out what was available, and eventually the activities desk at the Papakea was able to get us tickets (after some searching) for the luau at the Hyatt (our first choice was the 'authentic' Old Lahaina Luau, but that was booked for a week in advance). All this thought of food made us hungry, so we ended up crossing to the strip mall and eating at a little fast food Italian place (Pizza Paradiso- definitely not recommended) then going back to bed.
Day: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - Notes/Resources
Last Updated 29 October, 1999
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