The Road to Hana

We enjoyed a lovely buffet breakfast this morning beside the hotel’s decorative ponds, with a horde of carp watching us closely from the pond beside the table. Clearly they are used to being fed crumbs by the breakfast guests!

We hit the road shortly after 9 and it was only a half hour drive to Paia which is the last “full service” town before Hana. We were interested to see that this morning the Haleakala mountain was totally clear of clouds, but resisted the temptation to head back up the mountain again. Today our route was along the ocean right around to the other side of Maui.

Not long past Paia the road narrows and starts winding along the edge of the island through incredibly lush rainforest. When the trade winds hit this side of Maui they dump huge quantities of rain on the northern side of the island which ensures that the Hana side stays gorgeous and green all year round. There are dozens of waterfalls to see above and below the road.

A couple of months ago I’d purchased an iPhone app which provides a GPS driven turn-by-turn guide of the sights of Maui. It turned out to be worth it’s weight in gold on the road to Hana! The guide would let us know about upcoming sights and whether they were worth a stop, where to park and where to take the best photos. This was particularly useful because the road is one of the premier tourist attractions on the island and this Thanksgiving weekend it was VERY popular. The tourists were out in force at at least one car in three was a convertible….

The road is only about 52 miles from Paia to Hana but there are 59 one lane bridges and a multitude of narrow curves. We probably averaged about 25 miles an hour for the whole drive and with stops along the way to view the beautiful bays, beaches and waterfalls it was after 1pm before we drove into Hana.

We decided to extend the trip a little further to visit the coast-side section of Haleakala National Park. The Park runs from the peak ( which we visited yesterday) all the way down to the ocean on the southern side of the island. At the sea level section of the park we stopped to see the lovely Oheo Pools ( called the “Seven Sacred Pools”) which are a series of swimming holes and waterfalls which run down to the ocean. There were  lots of people enjoying a swim in the pools today, but we’d left our cossies back at the hotel so we just admired the view and left them to it.

With fewer stops on the road back it only took about 2 hours but we were glad to stop at a beach just outside Paia to watch a kite surfer enjoying his afternoon in the surf.

Back at the hotel we watched a lovely sunset, this time from the beach, before heading down to the restaurant for a wonderful dinner – we both had the Crab crusted Opakapaka ( which is a pink snapper) and Maui purple sweet potato mash – it really was almost too pretty to eat….. but we did, of course, acompanies by a rather nice pinot gris from Oregon ( we haven’t managed to find any Hawaiian wine yet).  Maui has been a  real eye-opener so far. I’d always associated it with beaches, plushy resorts and golf courses but there is SO much more to this island than I had expected. We’e looking forward to another day exploring tomorrow… and maybe even a little relaxation time!