Tuesday - Pō’ai

Early Tuesday morning we set off to explore the east side of the island. From Kahului we set off on the famous “Highway to Hana.” I’ll try my best to describe this amazing stretch of pavement. The trip is a total of 53 miles from Kahului to Hana. The first 20 or so are pretty mild, gorgeous views, nice wide road, pretty straight for the most part, 45-55 mph for the most part. Then the fun begins. The northeastern side of Maui is really just a huge cliff covered in waterfalls and rainforests. Not the ideal place for a road. So un-ideal, in fact, that almost all of the bridges are just one lane. Most of the last 30 miles was 10-15 mph and so curvy that you could only see  30-50 yards of the road in front of you. Luckily we weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere and we thoroughly enjoyed our 2-3 hour journey to Hana. Waterfalls and tropical forests every where you looked. The road winds up and down the cliffs and snakes around and into every nook and canyon on the northeastern side.

We stopped at various parks along the way and finally meandered our way into Hana at about lunch time. We had lunch in Wai’anapanapa State Park, walked around the cliffs, explored a lava tube, and felt the amazingness of black sand between our toes. We found some native Hawaiian seabirds (Black Noddy) and headed on down the road.

The next hour of driving was more of the same windy curvy roads, but we happened to be stuck behind a tiny school bus dropping kids off from school. It was so cool to drive through a very undeveloped part of the island and be reminded that to some people, Hawaii is home (which is a discussion for another place and another time, this post is already way longer than I wanted it to be).

We found our way to the southern tip of the Haleakala National Park in O’heo Gulch. This was what Megan was most excited to see in Maui and it was well worth the extra driving to see. The seven sacred pools of O’heo are where several rivers and streams meet up and empty into the ocean. We hiked, swam, cliff jumped, and were genuinely captivated by the beauty of this place.

We took the road less traveled to get home. The road from the National Park, which took us around the southern edge, up through the mountains, and ended us back where we started the day in Kahului, was beautiful in a very different way from the rest of the island.

 

 

Tuesday can be summed up by saying that we went full circle – literally and figuratively. We did indeed make a huge circle around the eastern half of the island. We went from sunrise to sunset, from lush tropical rainforests to desert cattle ranch. We went from divided highway to one lane road. We traveled from our Resort town just down the street from where movie stars and billionaires vacation, to being stuck behind a bus full of shoeless elementary school children. It was truly and profoundly inspirational.