Road to Hana (part 2)

First a few tid bits.

The best resource we had for our trip was the book MAUI REVEALED by Andrew Doughty. If you are planning a trip to any of the islands, I would totally recommend it to all and anyone.

Wednesday we did a kayak snorkel tour with MAUI ECO TOURS. We loved it and had a great time. I was amazed with how much my hip flexers hurt from the rowing and balancing, but it was well worth it. We did 3 snorkel dives and saw several turtles, lots of other fish and beautiful coral.

Thursday we hit a few beaches and relaxed. We rented some boggy boards and had a great time.

Friday we spent the day exploring the adventurous and famously known ROAD TO HANA. This is an extremely winding, scary, beautiful, exciting drive. Without any stops along the way, I think it would take about 2 hours to get to Hana, it took us at least 6 hours because of all our stops. We loved stopping along the way to enjoy the sights, the waterfalls, the hiking and the banana bread. It was already 3:30 p.m. when we made it to the 7 sacred pools. The weather was very windy and rather chilly. We ended up hiking for 2 miles (each way) all the way up to the top waterfall of all of them. It was enormous! Sadly, it was late enough in the day that we were not able to do much more at the 7 sacred pools. We ended up running half of the trail down from the waterfall because it was already starting to get dark. We drove the road home with the top down on the convertible as the sun finished setting. It was beautiful to watch as we went around the cliffs and the different backdrops the road presented at sunset. Once it was completely dark, I just kinda stared up at the sky as I watched the stars begin to appear and become brighter and brighter.

(What a beautiful drive. It's a good thing we don't get car sick.)

(this is the coast line of Ke'anae Peninsula. It started to rain on us, but it was beautiful.)

(Enjoying the banana bread at the Halfway to Hana stop. 2 thumbs up in approval.)

(The Upper Waikani Falls, or better known as Three Bears Falls. We had to hike to these falls and kinda scale a wall a bit and do some boulder hopping, but it was invigorating. )

(for some reason I can not remember the name of these falls. We had to kinda scale along one side of the water (which was difficult) in order to get close to the bottom part of the falls. We met a few other couples here and worked together to figure out the best way to get across.)

(Wailua Falls. Pretty large waterfall, we ended up getting rained on so we did not stay long.)

(Wai'anapanapa - and black sand beach. The black sand here was formed from lava and water smashing into each other causing the fragments of black sand. I also found 6 large rocks to bring home for my "hot rocks".)

(Donald and I standing inside an old lava tube at black sand beach.)

(Donald is acting like the EXTREMELY tall bamboo along the trail up to Waimoku Falls has him trapped. This hike was 2 miles long, and while we were hiking thru the bamboo it was very dark because of how tall the bamboo was.)

(Here I am wading across a rushing stream in order to get to the waterfall. At first I was kinda nervous because no one else was around and I was unsure on if we were really suppose to cross, but once we were in the water, we were good to go and continued along the path.)

(check out how small Donald is as he is being dwarfed by Waimoku Falls at the top of the 7 sacred pools.)

One thing I do regret is that we were not able to to spend any time enjoying the pools at 7 sacred pools. I wish we had taken an additional day and went back to do more hiking and spend a few hours at the pools. Instead, we chose to do other adventures that I will write about on another day.