Maui is a very humble Island...or so we thought before the airport welcome banner...But it really was amazing. The trip began with us getting here on time and kind of late at night, but it really was very cool. First things first, we got to our hotel, searched for food and eventually settled on some Burger King.
Day 1:We got up early Tuesday morning and got on the road. The stuff we saw was absolutely breathtaking. In our first few waking hours, we jumped into a car and headed toward Hana. Supposedly, the road to Hana is the most beautiful group of sites one can set out to observe. We drove on this road starting at just about 7:15. Packed with Towels, cameras, snacks, and an adventurous spirit, we set out to find some waterfalls, and some sites to capture.
We knew the road was going to be winding and narrow in places, but we weren't expecting so many one lane bridges...Signs were posted that warned you to yield to oncoming traffic. Let me tell you, if you didn't yield, it didn't stop the oncoming traffic a bit. Locals did not fear the road as much as we did.
This picture here is one of the road winding around the mountain. The curves seem nice and pretty from this far away, but trust me, the road seems much more frightening as you take these turns without knowing if an 18 wheeler is going
to come barrel-assing around the other side and take you out. The ribbon is just amazing to see wrapping out like that. As you can see, the colors on this trip were the most amazing thing to see. The contrast is just....well look at it!!
Our first stop on this trip was supposed to be after the five mile marker. We were following a book, you see, and that book told us to drive 1.6 miles past the five mile marker, since there is no six mile marker. I stopped as close to 1.6 as we thought we could get...in this stop, was supposed to be four waterfalls and the last was supposed to be paradise. We followed the directions as best we could and this is what we got.
The five of us began by hiking down through a bamboo forrest. As a testament to my loving roommate of two years in Maine, I have taken a picture of myself as the "Panda BeeaAARR!?" The actual hike down wasn't bad, but then we were to jump a ditch and get to the other side...but it was kind of a long jump...Rich decided to Poll Vault on this downed bamboo shoot. It was cool to watch, but this picture makes it look at least seven million times cooler...but you be the judge.
There was a lot more hiking and a lot more rock hopping. involved, but eventually we got all the
way up to the top of a hill. At the top of this hill, was.....A COW FARM!! We saw two! Only two waterfalls, and neither was paradise I'll have you know! But a failure...I doubt that. It was an adventure...and what a blast at that.
It took a while and was a lot of work, and we were dirty and sweaty after the first stop on our trip, but here we were and there was an adventure to be had. Below is a picture of Rich and I helping Megan cross the stream (a pretty fast running stream I might add and about a foot and a half deep) so we could get back in the car after we decided that this was not the right place. A cool waterfall, yes, but not four and not a paradise.
We were hopping back and forth across streams for a while and using bamboo to help us scale up and down steeply sloping, slick, muddy hills. We hopped trees, ran through long grass and hiked through even more bamboo just to get back to the car and get ready to keep on trucking.
A little farther down the road we ran into a neat little place called the
Garden of Eden. It was quite a name to live up to and it mostly did. We were a little spoiled from our first stop and the ensuing adventure, so we were a little low on our dedication to this lovely garden. However, the bananas, 100 year old Mango tree and Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. What's a Rainbow Eucalyptus you ask, well look toward the left and behold the Rainbow Eucalyptus!!! It looks so fake it's ridiculous, but still, it was real and very cool to see.
Let's see, what else did it have....We took a picture of ourselves in a glorious clearing. This was the best and brightest picture we had, but it was beautiful. The clearing had an amazing view, too. The other picture is a photo of that particular view, in which you may recognize the island from the beginning of Jurassic Park. Down in the bottom right, out beyond the hill, is that particular island/rock that the helicopter flies by in the opening sequence of the islandparts of the movie.
There were some amazing things to be seen there and you'll have to trust me, or ask for more pictures later. Down the road, however were more adventures...
Ching's Pond was our next stop, and it was a neat little place with a small waterfall. How was
the water? Look at my face...We parked our car on the side of the road and hiked down to a small pond that laid at the bottom of a pretty sizeable cliff. You can see where kids were jumping into, down from about 3o feet. They would land with a big splash right about where Megan is standing in this picture. Just behind her is a deep pool within the pond that's about 15 feet in diameter and the kids had to jump OUT to get passed the rock walls! It was insane and these kids were about 10 at best! Their insane out here...no joke. But Ching's Pond, though cold, was a good stop. A little bit down the road, we stopped at what was supposed to be our Private Waterfall (according to the book.)
Our private waterfall was a bust, maybe...you might say anyway. It was a fun hike and we almost lost Meg and Alison a few times on some wobbly rocks. You can see, though, how cool this might have been were the water to be flowing. A few of the waterfalls were skimpy like this one during our trip, but the views were still quite cool. Aside from the steep walls and dwarfing terrain, falling guavas were kind of a problem. Rich and I got there a bit ahead of the girls as you can see, so we had time to watch as guavas fell, hit terminal velocity and struck the water with some serious speed. A couple of them never surfaced.
The trip to and from was pretty fun and got our hopes up that we might see some amazing stuff again, like we did earlier in our adventures.
We next came to a group of three waterfalls called the Three Bears. Here, we saw a cool set of three big falls from the street and then we decided this wasn't quite close enough...so we hiked down, under the bridge, past some amazing looking flowers, and around a corner on some big boulders and then jumped
right in. We swam around for a while and enjoyed being in paradise! The first two falls were stronger and felt like a massage. This one that we are under, was the smallest but it was the only one we could all fit in without squinting from the water in our eyes. We became quite attached to swimming in waterfalls.
Was it fun? Well...don't we all look happy...SHAKA, Bra!
We had a lot of fun there and Amy and Rich went all photography crazy while the rest of us were reclothes-ifying...(is that a word?...maybe not...)...After the Three Bears, we did a lot of driving....All in all, we only drove about 115 or so miles that day, but most of it was at about 10-20 miles per hour. It was about a 14 hour driving day, but it was well worth it to see what we saw.
Not long after that stop, we made some stops on the highway to see some scenic turnouts, took some more pictures in front of some really amazing waterfalls. We drove about half the distance
we would end up driving when we stopped to see the world's largest He'au, the Black Sand Beach and a scenic beach-front waterfall called Blue Pool. The trip down to the Blue Pool was, let's say...interesting...It was about a 20 or 30 minute drive down an unpaved road when we saw the He'au turnout, but we thought we'd come back for it...our bad. We missed it and never got around to that one. We did eventually get to Blue Pool after another 10 minutes drive, then parking in a sketchy "parking lot" and lastly walking past 5 or 10 hand-written no trespassing signs and one stating bluntly that the Blue Pool was a hoax and we were all on some family's land. The pictures though were worth it in the end. We would have gone swimming here, but there was too many people and the floaties took a little something out of the adventure. Gorgeous though, no?
We next drove to a Black Sand Beach in a state park. The sand was more rocky there being that it was created mostly by volcanic glass breaking down from waves and erosion.
Once again, the contrasts on this island are what make you stop and stare in wonder. The black, green and deep blue in this cove was the major draw. There was also a cave you could swim in but we never found it. My bad, Trailblazer Tim dropped the ball.
The sand alone was something to see, but the view from the cliffs was truly astounding.
It wasn't long after this that we stopped in Hana to find the Red Sand Beach. A little different than the Black Sand Beach, but truly a sight much like its predecessor.
The Red Sand Beach was almost a dud. When we first tried to find it, we saw a vaguely red-shaded, dark dirt that we believed was the Red Sand Beach. We got there and everyone stopped, but I decided that since I dragged everyone this far, I had to find out if this was the actual site or if I should keep going. I trekked up a slippery, crumbly sand hill. On the left was a steep wall up and on the right was 75 foot drop into the ocean. After that, I walked around the corner to see this...Can you even comprehend those contrasts and that blue? I couldn't at first, but I was so excited that I ran back up the slope and slid down the other side to get back to the group faster...I'm so glad I did because this is the most breathtaking thing I've ever seen. This picture is gorgeous but the blues were even more brilliant and the red, even brighter and the two mixed at the shore to make a true purple tide. Totally worth it.
After that we were about ready to get home, but not before we took a picture with the Haouli sign. Thinking it was a Haole sign. You see Haole means white guy, Haouli means happy (as in happy birthday). It was a mistaken idea, but it was funny at the time. And they are pronounced close to the same. Ah well...it added to the humor in the car. We were all getting tired and hungry though. After, we saw Hana, we were determined to get back.
We had another 3 and a half hours of driving and only 15 minutes or so were in the light. It was about 1 hour later, though, that we lost our battery in the second camera. That's right, we had two cameras and ran out of battery in both. We're goofs and there were a LOT of pictures...these are but a few. We wish that the batteries would have lasted a bit longer, though. We saw a few cows walking up the street right at us. After that, in the dead of night, walking in front of us, were four horses, a daddy who didn't mind us, a baby who wanted to stay in front of us at all costs, a mommy who wouldn't let us go anywhere near the baby and another horse who could give a shit less, but loved to be in the way just the same. It took us about 20 minutes to pass the last horse and haul-balls to get back to diving to get home. We drove by about 30 more cows with no fence between them and the roads.
Day 2:Day two was a pictureless day for the most part. We woke up kind of late, did a beach on the south west coast and then headed to the west side of Maui. The beach was hot and Alison and Rich got themselves burneded up good. I think everyone was having a weird, off-day from the 14 hours in a car. The crew needed a beach day.
The beach was a very shallow-watered beach. We walked out about...hmmm...100 feet before the water got to shoulder length. It was a fun tide too. We had a great time there I'd say.
A little later, we decided to head to the West side and take a trip around that side and see the blowhole and maybe some scenery...we saw an amazing sunset, some gorgeous valleys and cool little villages. The exciting part of the day was mostly the games we played in the car. The blowhole was a close second and the sunset was the third I'd say. We missed some of the other fun stuff because the directions in the book were less than perfect.
Some other interesting facts consist of:
-Megan getting eaten by flesh-eating red fire ants.
-I rule at the game where you say the name of a celebrity with the first initial that matches the last initial of the previous celebrity.
Day 3:Our final day, day three, began with a quick breakfast at an amazing Mexican resaurant in Maui called Cafe Mambo. It was delicious, everyone was excited about it. We stopped in this little town called Paia. It was a small early-British-looking town, a lot like the towns on Martha's Vineyard. Kind of vintage British settlement really.
The entire goal of day three was to see the four waterfalls that we missed the first day. The
adventure was something to behold. We started by being more accurate with the book's directions. We stopped just about a tenth of a mile earlier than we did on day one. After that, came the readying. We were doused with suntan lotion and bug repellent and finally...ready to go.
To get to the first waterfall, we climbed down about 13 feet of bamboo shoots. Then we had to jump a 6 foot deep chasm...only about 2 feet wide. We then climbed about 20 more feet through more bamboo and hopped across a stream...I fell and hurt my butt as well as scratched up me poor little elbow..yar...so then we jumped a downed tree and headed through more bamboo. We followed the directions in the book and saw a waterfall...no water...we thought we had reached the first waterfall...turns out this was an extra...so we hiked through some crappy up and down paths in mud and came to a beautiful waterfall with some nice people swimming with some kids. We took pictures and continued up a trail and across a slippery wall or rock. And kept going through some more bamboo.
We then came to gorgeous waterfall number two. The pool was incredible. We took some more pictures and then climbed to the left and reached a sheer 12 foot rock wall. We climbed a pretty sturdy rope ladder and up to the top of the waterfall. We boulder-hopped and walked up the hill and around a few bends. We finally reached a point when we had to climb through some more woods and over some thick mud. We came to an impasse. We were to swim through a 100 foot pool that was filled with some gross rotten guavas....yup again with the guavas. SO...we did.
We swam to the third waterfall which was only about 6 feet tall and had to climb up to the fourth and final waterfall. It was absolutely goregous...or would have been if it weren't for the lack of water, again.
Afterwards, we went all the way back and swam once again through the gross guavas. In fact, we smelled of the guavas for the rest of the day. Amazing?...yes....gross?....yesser
Finally, on the way home, we stopped by Twin Falls where there was a sign warning against leaving valuables in your car in order to not support drugs and ice use....haha...I loved it...we swam in this waterfall, too! AMAZING!!
I loved Maui...We all had a blast...but we continued our vacation on Oahu that night............
When we got back from Maui, the night we got back, we got out the games and decided to play a game called Imaginiff...In this game you write all the names around the board and some famous names. The point is to imagine if someone were something else...I.E. Imaginiff Amy were a fruit, what fruit would she be. The most popular answer would move one space. We played for nearly 2 hours and Megan never got landed on. She was sad and we all had a good laugh, but in the end, I was victorious. haha, after game-night we game-planned.
t the US has lost. Starting with the first ones lost, when they were state of the art warfare. It is really crazy to think of the numbers of people that have been lost in submarines and a good number were all friendly fire accidents. Silly "Silent Service," if you spoke up you'd all still be alive...
The guns and subs and missiles and torpedos and rockets, and unmanned craft were all so cool. We took so many pictures, but we couldn't post them all. After we walked around the sub and all the artifacts, we took a trip by boat to the Arizona Memorial.
When we left Pearl Harbor, we went right up to the North Shore to see the Dole Plantation
. What do you do at a pineapple plantation, Timmy?! I'm glad you ask, Voice in My Head. It turns out that the Dole Plantation is home to the world's largest maze. We spent 45 minutes in a giant hedge maze (the record is 6 minutes, but most people take somewhere near an hour).
