Maui 2004: Dec 19 - Dec 25

I did some looking around a few days ago for the best beaches in Maui (thank you internet) and came up with Wailea Beach. We went there on Saturday morning, and played in the ocean! There were two boogie boards in our condo so we brought them along and tried them out. It’s not too hard to do and it’s pretty fun, though my ribs were a little sore in the morning, so maybe I was doing it wrong? Once we got back from the beach, we swam at our pool but it was ridiculously cold compared to the ocean, so none of us wanted to jump in. Me and Julie decided that we’d hold hands and jump in together on three. Watch what happened.

Yesterday we set off for the north side of the island to see what we could see. We were in search for another beach, but also enjoying the sights along the way. We ended up at Iao Valley where we took a bunch of pictures of pretty green hills. After that we headed to the shore to see what the beaches looked like, but they were no good for swimming. The beach was short and steep with rocks and big waves, so we made a beeline back to Wailea. The sun was behind the clouds for most of the day, but it was still warm in and out of the ocean. Thumbs up to Wailea!

On Monday we took the Road to Hana (a scenic route with over 600 curves and 50 one-lane bridges). It was absolutely beautiful; we took an insane number of pictures of the beautiful landscape. Our first stop along the way was to hike the Waikamoi Ridge Trail where we hiked among a number of exotic trees including guava, mango, and bamboo.

Another neat stop was the village of Keanae which is located on a small peninsula. There were large waves crashing into the rocky shore which created fantastic sprays high into the air. While we were there we bought a bag of taro chips (taro is a local root used to make poi but can also be fried ala potatoes) and a fresh warm loaf of banana bread; both were delicious!

The highlight of the trip was definitely the visit to Hale o Pi’ilani Heiau, the ruins of an ancient place of worship for the native Hawaiians. We weren’t able to get super close to it, but it was still amazing to see. The surrounding grounds have been nicely maintained and all sorts of unique native plants are grown along the trail to make it even more interesting! I took a bunch of pictures of the heiau and grounds and stitched them together for an awesome panorama shot. The file is a little over 4 megs, but it’s worth the download. You can see my family on the far left walking toward the heiau, they should give you a good frame of reference of just how huge this place is.

After the heiau, we reached the town of Hana where we were finally able to eat lunch! At this point we had driven about 55 miles, but it had taken us around 4 hours due to the crazy road and all of the neat stops. After Hana, we had to decide whether to go back the way we came, or continue along the Hana Highway which would eventually loop around the rest of the eastern part of Maui. We chose the latter even though a long stretch of it would be a one-lane unpaved road. It was quite an adventure riding in our rented mini-van along the rugged trail, but it also granted us some of the most beautiful sights I’m sure any of us will ever see.

By the time we finally made it back to our condo (about 10 hours after we had left), we were all definitely ready to be out of the van! But at the same time, we also had the feeling like we had just done something very special. We had trekked around the perimeter of Mt. Haleakala and had seen numerous unforgettable sights.

Yesterday morning we swam at our pool while the sun hid behind the clouds. My mom and Julie went to get pizza for lunch and when they got back it started raining. It rained pretty much all day, so we hung out at our condo and didn’t do much (TV, books, videogames, internet, etc). When we had enough of sitting around, we decided to go to a mall and walk around. We window shopped for an hour or so and then had dinner at the food court. All during this time, there was a dance recital going on in the center of the mall so we watched a bit of that as well. It was a pretty low-key day but it was nice recoup time from all the stuff we’d done since we got here.