Maui: Day 3: The Trashcan at the Kmart


We arrived in Kahului and stopped off at the K-mart to clean out our rental car. We did a pretty good job cleaning it out and relatively fast. We threw out all of our junk into a trash can in the parking lot of Kmart.

With a nice clean car, we returned the rental, checked our baggage and went thru screening/xrays. Once we got in, we realized that our cell phones are missing. Zenia told me that she put it in a bag when we were cleaning out the car at the Kmart. I said that I saw a bag sitting on the chair and asked her if I could throw it away. I thought she may have said yes and I threw it away. We weren't totally sure if we threw it away and tried to re-live the moment of trashing stuff, but we couldn't quite figure it out.

With three hours before we flew out, we decided to hail a taxi cab at the airport and take it back to the Kmart. When we arrived at the airport, we dug thru the trash can (even the cab driver was helping us!). To no avail, we could not find the cell phones. We thought it was lost forever (even our National Park Passport that has records of every national park we've been to was in that bag!) We returned back to the airport (a $15 cab ride later), had a nice dinner at the airport, trying to figure out what we trashed, over and over again. We got on the plane, crashed hard, and both slept most of the trip.

When we arrived at the airport back in Los Angeles, we took a shuttle back to our car. While we were in the shuttle we hear Zenia's phone beeping in the suitcase! When we got to our car, we threw open the suitcase and behold, both of our phones were found, and our passport too!

The vacation ended up perfectly.

Maui: Day 3: Northwestern part

We first checked out the 'Iam Valley and Needle, in which we thought we were somewhere else that had a swinging bridge at (which we found out later it was several miles further west). The needle was pretty cool, and snapped a few photos there. We headed back out of the valley and headed west on highway 340. When we hit the area that had the swinging bridge (Wahe'e Valley), we found out it was gonna cost us money just to walk on the bridge. We decided it wasn't worth it, so we continued west. We again hit some nasty one lane driving that was very similar to the road to and from Han. There were a few times where an oncoming car was fast approaching and we had to back up to a turnout to let them by and vice versa. We found an area called the Nakalele Blowhole, where the ocean waves would crash against the cliff and into a hole in the cliff pushing up water thru a hole in the mountain much like a whale's blowhole would shoot out. It was pretty cool looking. And wet. The climb up and down was a little awkward, since there wasn't exactly a clear path and you had to hop down over several rocks. Continuing on thru the winding one lane road we finally hit a two lane road and it was smooth sailing from there. We headed around the northwest part of the island with spectacular views that reminded me of Ireland (which I've never been to, but it looks like it does on TV!). We headed south now and back to where we were for Tom/Steph's wedding in Ka'anapali. We had lunch at a restaurant at Whaler's Village (the same restaurant that Tom took us for drinks on Wednesday). I had fish and chips and Zenia had ????. We decided to walk down the beach a bit near the cliffs where Tom and Steph got married by the Sheridan Hotel. We laid out in the sun for a bit and watched a wind storm tornado looking thing come thru and blow someones raft 100yards into the air and out into the ocean. I laughed at how crazy the situation was. Little did I know the same thing would happen to us a few minutes later, blowing one of our beach mats way out of the way. We didn't even see where it blew away. It wasn't until about 30 minutes later when someone came up to Zenia and told her where it went. I tried to snorkel in the area. The water was amazingly clear and quite warm. Trying to put on my flippers for the first time in the ocean turned out to be a little embarrassing. I was sitting on the beach where the water came up to me, while putting on the flippers. The current was so powerful that it rolled me over and pulled me into the ocean a couple feet. I'm pretty sure many people saw me rolling around in the waves. I know Zenia did, because I saw her laughing. Once I got the whole gear on, trying to figure out how to snorkel, it was amazing. I started out seeing one fish that I followed down the coast to the cliffs where I saw a million huge fish floating below. I ran into someone I didn't see who was also snorkeling. I turned to get out of the snorkeler's way, when I saw a couple dozen other snorkelers right in front of me. This must have been the prime spot. It was still pretty cool watching people dive down to take photos of themselves underwater. It got a little too crowded, so I headed to the beach and walked back to Zenia. We were both pretty hot and decided to get out of the sun and rinse off. We walked around the shops there at Whaler's Point, killing time before we headed to the airport. We got a smoothie and headed back to our car, heading down the coast and around and up to Kahului.

Maui Day 3: Haleakula

We woke up about 2:15 am (I hit the snooze button on the alarm set at 2am) and we packed up everything in the Maui Lu hotel room, checking out of our room about 3am. We were about to begin the longest day of our lives.

We began to drive up to Haleakula National Park to see the famous sunrise. We heard it was spectacular and that it would be really really cold there. It took us about 2 hours from Kihea to get there. When we got there, it was very dark with a sliver of light coming up. And my god it was cold... cold... COLD! And windy. We rushed up to the observation tower to get out of the cold wind. We met Tom up there and his new brother and law Ryan. Ryan didn't seem to be quite prepared for the cold. When he arrived he was the only one wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

As for the sunset, it was quite beautiful. It wasn't an amazing sunset like the one we saw at Bryce Canyon, but it was still quite amazing. What made it amazing was not the sunset itself, but the scenery around it. We were over 10,000 feet above sea level, high above clouds, overlooking the island. The clouds at first seems to look like distant mountains, but once the sunlight revealed that they were not mountains and that they were clouds, made our mouths say "wow!". Once the sun came up, we trekked around a little bit with Tom and Ryan to look over the edge of the mountain overlooking the valley. It was quite breathtaking.

We said our goodbyes to Tom and Ryan, and headed back down the mountain. We followed many bikers down the road which seem to be an attraction that looked pretty fun. Zenia passed out asleep down the mountain and I seemed to get a little sleepy as well while driving. Zenia tried to keep me awake, but she could barely stay awake, resulting in her talking in her sleep. "Why did she drop that towel?" and blurting out "WHAT!?" in her sleep. Good stuff.

We finally reached the valley after about an hour and a half down into "airport town", Kahului. Grabbing some breakfast at Denny's and buying some swimsuits and snorkeling gear, we decided to hit the northwestern part of the island.

Maui: Day 2: The Road FROM Hana


We were pretty much exhausted by the time we headed out of Hana, continuing on our 'around the east side of Maui in one day' trip. Heading south now, we stopped briefly at the Pools of 'Ohe'o (aka the 7 Sacred Pools) in the south end of the Haleakala National Park. We renewed our yearly National Park pass we get since last year's pass was due to expire soon. We hiked a little bit by some newly constructed ancient huts and some interesting trees that seemed to be supported up by its roots in a unique way above the ground. When we reached the pools it was a madhouse of people everywhere, climbing up on rocks and jumping off into the three pools (we only saw three pools, but I hear there are five pools and not 7 pools). We took a few pictures and headed back up to the car. Zenia was exhausted and I had a little bit more of energy left in me. We snapped a photo of us just before getting to our car. She appeared to be wide awake, while I look like I'm the one exhausted.

We continued down the highway, heading west now, on the south side of Maui. Between mile markers 38 and 33 were probably the most stressful part of the whole entire drive. Much like the northern part of the island, the roads narrowed down to one lane total, sharing the road with oncoming traffic, but this time, the roads became increasingly worse. The roads went from poorly paved to just plane dirt. Most of this stretch was a long, winding, edge of the cliffs dirt road. It was stressful for Zenia, who always seems to drive the hardest part of any of our trips. We never knew what car would come around the corner, since we could not see it. This road seemed to go on forever, but the scenery was amazing. This part of the island was more dry, with the colors of brown and yellows sweeping all across the area. The area became vast and wide open with the coast on your left and the mountains heading toward Haleakula to your right. It was quite beautiful. It was even more beautiful when we finally hit beautifully paved roads again. "Ahhhhh" we both said as we hit the smooth pavement.

We finished up our day continuing around the eastern part of the island completely exhausted. We arrived at our hotel room at the Maui Lu in Kihei, ordering Dominos pizza and crashing hard. Very hard. We were in preparation for out last day in Maui before leaving at 10pm that night. Our plan was to see the sunrise at Haleakula.

Maui: Day 2: The Road to Hana: The Road

The real road to Hana is sometimes called "The Road To Hell". We didn't quite understand why it would be called this until we were actually on the road. There comes a point on the road where it winds up and down the coast, thru thick jungle/forest. To top it all off, the road becomes only one lane to share with oncoming traffic. When a car comes around the corner in your direction, you have to pull over to the side of the road and let them pass, or vice versa, depending on if you are going uphill or not. As we head down the highway, sipping on some Cane Juice we got from a stand just after Twin Falls, we stopped off at a place called Ke'anae. Ke'anne was right on the coast in a peninsula and was covered in lava rocks where the waves would crash against them, creating huge dramatic splashes. Both Zenia and myself spent a good amount of time exploring and taking photos. We took off back up the road to the highway, stopping off at a stand to buy some EXCELLENT banana bread which we ate for lunch. I read that there was even better banana bread on the island, but this was pretty damn great to eat.

Continuing along the coast , we were getting a little tired and we decided to pull off onto a dirt road to rest. Upon reading about the road we were on, it appeared that we were very close to an amazing sounding waterfall called "The Blue Pool". There was even a official looking sign that said something along the lines that visitors should be respectful around the pool because it is a sacred area to the natives. Zenia fell asleep as we went down the long dirt road to the Blue Pool. Zenia was tossing and turning while sleeping the entire time as the bumpy road knocked her back and forth. She didn't even bat an eye until we reached a makeshift parking lot and I turned off the engine. The parking lot had a sign that said to park here was $2.00, but we didn't see anyone there to pay, so we took our chances and headed down the path to the Blue Pool. About 100 yards down the path, we found a parking cone in the path with some kind of handwritten sign on a big shard of orange plastic. On the sign said something along the lines of "There is no such thing as a 'Blue Pool'. There is no trespassers allowed at the pool. Friends and Family allowed at the pool only." We felt a little weird about hanging around here, since we already passed a few 'no trespassers' signs here on the island, so we headed back to our car to head back to the highway. Also along the road was the Kahanu Garden that included the ancient temple Pi'ilanihale Heiau. This may have been pretty cool to see if they didn't close at 2pm. It was a little after 2, and the garden's gates had already closed.

After being let down by two places that we wanted to see, we continued on the long and winding road to Hana, reaching another stopping spot: Wai'anapanapa Black Sand Beach (I think it was a state park). There was a little hike along the way, past a few ancient relics and a graveyard. When we reached the beach, the sand was exactly as it was described: Black. There was a million small black rocks that you had to cross first before putting your feet into the black sand. It was soft and it seemed different then your regular sand. I seemed to sink into the sand quicker and was harder to keep above the sand. Also on the beach there was a small cave that we climbed into, and I bumped and scraped my head on the top of the low ceiling.

We finally arrived to Hanna around 3pm and we wanted to see the Red Sand beach located at Ka'uiki Head. We got to the area where the trail to the beach should be but we ended up trespassing again on someone's property. We noticed a trail on the other side of a barbed wire fence that appeared to head down to the coast. We started to follow the fence up the hill, but we were already too tired to follow the fence up the hill to what appeared to stretched up for some bit past an old creepy cemetery. Fed up with all this no trespassing crap that the book we had purchased had told us to disregard, we gave up and got back in the car, ready to head on the road thru Hana, on the way on the road FROM Hana.

Maui: Day 2: The Road to Hanna: Twin Falls: June 29, 2006

We started our morning with a quick breakfast thru a long wait in the drive thru of Jack and the Box in Kihea. From there we headed north into "Airport Town" where we stopped by at Walmart in search of some kind of water shoes and some bandaids for a blister Brian got on his feet. We then headed off to meet Tom and Steph (and family) down Highway 360 at a place called "Twin Falls".
We weren't quite prepared for the hike that was ahead of us. It wasn't very strenuous but what we really didn't expect was treading up a slippery rock filled stream. If we actually bought water shoes at Walmart, then we wouldn't have a problem, but we thought they were too expensive and passed up on purchasing them. So both of us began to cross the stream up towards the beautiful waterfall that lie ahead.. barefoot. The couple who were ahead of us ended up slipping and falling into the water, damaging thier camera, which made us tread very slow. We found out the big rocks were covered in slime and were very very slippery, and the smaller rocks were easier to work with. It took us about 10 minutes to cross about 15 feet of stream, while other people with water shoes crossed in 10 seconds. When we finally arrived at the fall, it was beautiful. Tons of people swimming, taking photos.
We even got our photo taken, but it turned out all blurry.
We waited for Tom/Steph and family to arrive since they were way behind us attempting to hike the stream all the way. We waited for quite some time when we decided to head back and look for them. As we headed back is when they arrived. So we said our goodbyes and headed back thru the stream. This time, we both kept our shoes on to cross, which was so much easier to cross the stream. We crossed the stream in about 10 seconds, both with soggy shoes. As we hiked down the path back to our car, we ran into a lizard of some sort (a gekko perhaps), hiding in the leaves of a plant. Further down the hike Zenia remembers Tom's mom tell her about some plants on the hike that closed up when you touched it. When she told me, I remembered seeing some crazy people on the hike earlier petting some plants. So we hiked down to that area and sure enough there were these tiny leaved plants (still dont know what they are called) that would close up, much like a venis fly trap, when touched. Its almost as if it camofauged itself to look just like a branch without leaves. After that, we started to crave some cane juice (though we really didnt know how it would taste), got to the parking lot, we continued down the highway on our trek to Hana.