I’m In Maui, Day 17!
Indicative of the entirety of the Road to Hana:
My guidebook (”Maui Day by Day”) says,
Just after MM (mile marker) 25 is a narrow 3-mile (4.8 km) road leading from the highway, at about 1,000 feet (300m) elevation, down to sea level.
Nahiku. This remote, stunningly beatufiul area was once a thriving village of thousands; today the population has dwindled to fewer than a hundred–including a few Hawaiian families, but mostly extremely wealthy mainland residents who jet in for a few weeks at a time. At the end of the road, you can see the remains of the old wharf from the town’s rubber-plantation days. There’s a small picnic area off to the side. Dolphins are frequently seen in the bay.
Rich people, history, dolphins. Worth seeing, right? So after almost getting run off the road by a monster truck with bigger wheels than anyone would ever need, after sitting behind a truck as he chatted to one truck going the other direction, then one guy in a yard with a dog, then another guy in a different yard with a different dog, after passing countless shack-like enclaves habitated by the kinds of people that look like they’ll throw you off a cliff for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, after seeing the umpeenth “Dead End” or “Private Property Proceed At Your Own Risk” sign, and after coming to a fork in the road which not only isn’t mentioned, but lacks any signage besides the “Dead End” and “Get Out”-effect signs, and still hundreds of feet above sea level, and really quite sick of driving through scary stonerville rather than anything resembling rich people with dolphins, we turned around. And this was going to be our last stop before heading back to West Maui (with a quick stop to get dishes at Macy’s).
I get the feeling, especially after passing a group of (Hawaiian) girls aged about 9-17 holding up a joint and gesturing the universal hand-signal for weed right in the middle of the main highway, fairly close to the beginning of the highway, that the Road to Hana is only talked up as the wonderful place that it’s talked up as because it’s a way to get people other than stoner hippy freeloading hitchhikers onto the road to maybe spend money on other than pot.
There was one place we stopped early on, called Waikamoi Ridge (if you’re reading the same book I am, there aren’t any restrooms here), made me quite hopeful, and which I’ll still remember fondly even if the rest of the drive was stupid. We were driving past these HUGE bamboo forests and if there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do it’s walk through a bamboo forest, and sure enough the trail here goes through a bamboo forest. I took a million pictures but I think I left my camera in the car so I’ve uploaded a bunch of random things from the past couple of days (not sized right because I’ve discovered that Mail resizes pictures automatically small, medium and large, and doing it custom to 470 takes too much time on this poor little computer):
When we went to the Iao Valley last Saturday. I love banana leaves.
At the Maui Ocean Center. Peter probably has better pictures on his camera, but whatever. I wanted to upload one now cuz it was pretty. Top tip: a good activity for the day after you slice a bit of your thumb off and have a bandage you don’t want getting wet.
That’s Peter with the goggles and the littler turtle coming up for air. I was standing on the rocks keeping my bandage dry. Which was good cuz his under-water camera had a crack in it and all the pictures he took were lost.
Even though, or because it’s a cliché, the sun setting last night.
As for the Road to Hana being “the most beautiful drive in the world”: Hogwash. The road to West Maui is much nicer. And it was just gorgeous this evening.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:58 am
We share your feelings about Hana and have our own Hana horror-story. We arranged by Web to stay overnight at a Bed&Breakfast, and stopped for evening libations at the General Store. We both noticed a woman who’s legs looked like a topographic map of nasty bug-bites and welts…and when we arrived at the B&B it was she who greeted us. We tried to unload the Jeep but were driven away by the flock of mosquitoes who were already inhabitants of our B&B’s little back room - an attachment to a drab 70’s era garage behind a 70’s era house. We just ditched it and drove back and ate the cost. It’s a wonderful drive for flatlanders from Kansas who haven’t driven anything like the twisties on Highway 9 to Santa Cruz - and like some mountain towns (with whom the locals could be interchangeable) the stoners and dreadlocked scary hippies still think it’s “quaint” to be a such.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
That’s exactly what I said!!! Sort of. Specifically, I said “I guess if you’re from Iowa and you come here thinking, ‘yeah this is exactly what Maui should be like!’” but it’s not, and frankly there’s not a lot to see, and it’s way too much work and the books tell you to go down these side streets which you do because you think there’s going to be something there but really it’s just a bunch of people’s front yards with signs that say “this is a neighborhood watch community if you don’t live here you don’t belong here” because they don’t want you gawking at their front yards about as much as you don’t want to either. And I swear half the stuff in this book now is code for “great weed”.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:36 am
What I found somewhat annoying was that most all the peripheral roads that one might drive up and go exploring were gated so there was no choice on direction really, and like you say nobody really wants to just gawk at the neighbors. Heh - the Hilo side of the Big Island is kinda the same way. Wet and lotsa potheads. Hmmm…didn’t think about the guide/code-book that way, but now that you mention it, it seems a very likely publishing trick. We used a different book seemingly without code, “Maui Revealed” that has really good and detailed directions to places like the blow-hole and various swimming-spots, so detailed it’s made some locals and businesses mad. But at one jumping-off spot for a suggested hike, we wound up in such a neighborhood and didn’t feel safe leaving the jeep or even getting out - so we bailed. We also had the rental-Jeep tossed once in Pa’ia, but they didn’t take anything because it was just a cheap stuff from the ABC store and some CD’s of IZ that everybody (except us) is already tired-of. ;-) I think they did it just to show us they could, and get away with it, and that we couldn’t do anything to prevent it.