Sadly, this is our last day on Maui. After a final breakfast on the Lanai (good-bye sunrise, good-bye birds!) we packed up and checked out (our flight isn't until 9:30pm, but our checkout time is 11am). Since we have to carry all of our stuff in the car today, we decided this would be a good time to do the road to Hana, with a return straight to the airport. For the Hana drive we were getting something of a late start, leaving Papakea around 9:30. On the way around to the Hana highway, there was a huge mushroom cloud of smoke hanging over the island. This was from the cane fields, where they regularly start these huge fires as 'part of the processing' of the sugar cane (we learned this in one of the tourist brochures telling people not to call the fire department if they saw a field on fire). Pretty spectacular, and is smelled like molasses!
We had just barely reached the Hana highway when we made our first stop- Alison, research goddess that she is, found the Maui Crafts Guild in Paia. This is a gallery that is run by a bunch of local artists that take turns running the store. There is a lot of really nice work here, but we were really struck by the Gyotaku Fish Prints. These are made by painting a fish and then pressing it onto paper. There were many great ones here by Carrie Lee Brady of Hawaiian Fish Prints on wonderful papers, and we couldn't resist one of the Humuhumunukunukuapua`a to take home. There were also wonderful ceramic fish tiles, but we'll have to wait until we have a house for those!
Our next stop was the 'last stop' before Hana, a little store/deli where we bought sandwiches for the road. Of course it turned out that this wasn't the last 'last' stop, but the sandwiches were tasty so who are we to complain about imprecise advertising? The one thing that we didn't find was the famous Road to Hana cassette tape booth. These tapes are supposed to point out all the best things on the road, but we never found the booth, so we had to wing it. That wasn't too hard because everyone on the road was stopping at pretty much the same places, so they were easy to spot.
The Road to Hana is only about 35 miles long, but there are roughly 1.5 million switchbacks along this narrow road along the west edge of the island. This is the rainy side of the island, so everything is very lush (even now just after a drought), and there are waterfalls at every turn. We stopped at any number of waterfalls, and I dunked my head into one nice pool (very refreshing!). At that pool a very talkative woman was swimming around, but came out to sell us baby pineapple sprinkled with plum powder (very tasty).
We stopped at a wayside park at the bottom of the Waikamoi valley, the lower end of the same valley we hiked at the top of on our first day here (what a nice sense of completion eh?). We followed the jungle trail for about a half mile up, seeing the waterfalls across the valley and enjoying all the wild flowers in the jungle. Very pretty. Most of the people who stopped here didn't make it past the first switchback, so we had the trail to ourselves mostly.
We also took a detour down onto the Kenai peninsula, a rocky spit of lava that for some reason became a small town. The coastline there was beautiful, with water crashing between the lava floes. There was a very old church there built of lava rock and coral mortar, and a little cemetery. Cemeteries are something I almost always seem to visit on vacation. This one had shallow graves covered with lava rock, and headstones had old lei hanging over them. Two graves for children were heavily decorated with ribbons and toys.
By the time we were reaching Hana I was nearly nauseous from the constant turning back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. We turned off the highway at the black sand beach and I waded in a little. The black sands are really tiny pebbles of lava, and from one end of the beach to the other the pebbles are sorted by size by the action of the waves. We relaxed for awhile listening to the rattle of pebbles as the waves crashed over them. Unfortunately, it was already 4pm. It had taken so long to get here, I was afraid we would be late getting back if we stayed any longer. That plus hunger got us moving again.
I'm surprised Alison didn't kill me on the drive back. I was driving like a madman, with none of the slowing and stopping that we did on the trip here. I was really getting into it, feeling like a speed demon, when out of nowhere a local came up and passed me at about double my speed. Oh well, I guess they have lots of practice! We were passed about 3 times by locals in everything from souped up Honda CRXs to monster pickups. Damn rental cars! If I had a Passat I'm sure I could have taken them!
We ended up making it back to Paia by 5:30, more than twice as fast as I had expected. The good news was that this meant we had time to go out to dinner before heading back to the airport. We found a parking lot and walked to Paia Fish Market, an informal place similar to the Reel Inn in Santa Monica. The food was absolutely delicious! I had braised tuna sashimi (drool!) and Alison had a great sauteed Opa (whatever kind of fish that is, but it means 'delicious'). Definitely a good, reasonably priced place to eat.
We still hadn't done any real souvenir shopping, so Alison wanted to stop at a couple shops to find something for her mom. Of course, I found something for myself- an aloha print paperback book cover. Perfect for the beach, too bad I didn't have it earlier!
It was about time to head back to return the car and get to the airport. The road signs for the airport were inscrutable from this angle though. We ended up driving around and around for awhile before finally getting on the right road into the airport. Returning the car was relatively easy, but they had us pull the car straight into the cleaning line quite a ways from the office and the shuttle bus. We needed to clean up all our trash from the day trip, and gather/repack all of our luggage, and do this before they pulled our car up for cleaning and without getting hit by another car coming in. Not good planning on Avis' part. I almost left the fish print in the trunk, and would have if Alison hadn't noticed it was gone.
The airport was shopping central, and Alison found all she needed for her coworkers and friends. The departure areas were much like the arrivals- all open air pavilions that were very nice.
Nice, however, didn't last for long. American Airlines poor seating computers struck again, and Alison and I were placed 8 rows apart. There were dozens of people lined up at the gate trying to get reseated (including the same family of 2 parents and 2 kids from the flight here, again scattered all over the plane). American must have known there would be problems, because they didn't send any staff to the gate until right when it was time to board, so no one could try to get things straightened out. I was seated next to the most annoying newlyweds in history, who were by turns fighting and playing kissy face the entire flight. I closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep immediately, and didn't wake up until landing.
LAX at 5:30 in the morning is dead, and there wasn't a cab to be seen. However, a town car was there and the driver said he'd take us home for $28- about the same as a cab, so we had a comfortable drive home. It was on the drive that we heard we had just missed the 7.1 earthquake!! We always seem to miss the big ones! Our cat Vanna was pretty freaked out when we got home- she was hiding in the closet.
We had a wonderful trip! It was to short by far, and we are already thinking about when we can come back next!
Day: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - Notes/Resources
Last Updated 4 November, 1999
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