monday 07.04.2005 (day five: the big island / maui)

Posted in hawaii on July 25th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: beach, big island, hawaii, holidays, kahului, kona, lahaina, maui, ocean

We got up early and stopped at Starbucks for coffee before heading to the airport. I was way too excited to buy the special edition Hawaiian Starbucks card, to complement my superspecial ‘original’ card from Seattle. If I was also supersmart I’d have bought extras, because baristas always try to buy them off me. Alas, I am not supersmart at all.

rock graffiti

We had discovered the night before that the Big Island has some of the most fascinating road-graffiti I’ve ever seen. North of Kailua-Kona, it’s all black-rock lava fields. People take white rock and leave messages all over. They’re everwhere, and must look amazing from a helicopter.

The Kona airport, as I’ve mentioned, is a series of tiki huts. There’s the long building with all the check-in counters, and once you get past there, it’s a few huts for gates, and restaurant/bar hut, and a shopping hut. We spent 5 minutes in the shopping hut buying tacky postcards, and the rest of the time in one of the gate-huts writing them out. Luckily, I had about 30 of them to send, or I’d have been bored to death.

kona tiki-huts

We arrived at the usual pre-flight time, which meant way too early for such a little airport. It took about 5 minutes to return the car, get the shuttle back (the shuttles at the Kona airport are completely unnecessary), and check in. This time we were flying Island Air, and the people were just as friendly. The flight was barely half an hour long, but we still got beverage service.

haleakala

We flew to Maui on a turboprop jet that was smaller than a tour bus. I loved it. We could see both of the islands at the same time from the air. I saw the huge resorts around Wailea, Haleakala, and sugar cane fields as we landed.

wailea resorts

As before, we got to climb right out onto the tarmac. The Maui airport was much bigger, though; jets are allowed to land there.

Since it was only 9:30, we decided to set out on the road to Hana, which the book described as an all-day drive (it’s 52 miles). We got the exact same car in silver and named him Captain Hook. We stopped at what was soon to become one of my favorite natural-foods markets (Down to Earth) for picnic fare, and set off on our way from Kahului.

surfers at Hookipa Beach

The road to Hana begins in Paia, a town which quickly became a favorite. It’s on the windward side,
so it’s all about windsurfing. Full of cute shops and restaurants, it’s the kind of place I love to wander. Past Paia, we wandered around Hookipa Beach at the overlook, watching the surfers and gawking at the color of the water in the tidepools. It seemed that the ocean along the beaches in Maui looked a lot different that it did on the Big Island; much more clear and turquoise.

The drive up the road to Hana is amazingly slow. There wasn’t even much traffic at that time of the morning, but it’s a tiny 2-lane ‘highway’ that turns into a single lane on bridges, of which there are more than fifty. You round a switchback at the edge of a cliff, drive down into a gulch, stop at a one-lane bridge, wait til it’s clear, then cross. Then up out of the gulch, around another tight cliff-switchback, and repeat. Each gulch had its own stream and/or waterfall coming down from Haleakala. We saw gigantic groves of bamboo, dense hanging vines, and the road was littered with flowers. We saw banana, pineapple, sugarcane, coconut, and papaya farms. It smelled like eucalyptus the whole route.

We turned off to drive down to the Keanae Peninsula, a tiny old village on a lava flow. The coast was lava rock and tidepools, with waves slamming up over the rocks. I couldn’t believe how picturesque Maui was. It was almost too much to absorb.

Outside Hana, there were roosters running around all over the road. I was a huge fan of Hawaiian Road Cock (not so much of the Hawaiian Road Weasels we saw in both living and flattened form… apparently they were some kind of mongoose). We made it to Hana close to lunchtime, and visited the famous Hasegawa General Store. I tried Maui potato chips and was unimpressed (they also made me sleepy). We considered driving the 20 miles past Hana to the 7 Sacred Pools entrance to Haleakala National Park, but the road was tiny and I later read that we weren’t actually supposed to take our rental car out there. We went back to Hana and had our picnic lunch at the beach in town, which had reddish-brown sand. After lunch, we headed back down the way we had come.

waterfall and pool

Right as we left Hana, it started raining. It was mostly heavy mist, which didn’t prevent us from getting out of the car and hiking around by a waterfall, even though we came back drenched. Then the rain really began, and we all of a sudden knew the meaning of rainforest. It was insane driving on that tiny, winding road in a downpour. I also started to understand why they said those little streams could turn into raging rivers within seconds.

bamboo grove

As we turned out of one gulch, we saw a giant rainbow. Even though we saw them daily in Hawaii, it was still amazing. We drove back to Kahului and checked into our hotel. It was another of those tacky 60s-style a-frames on the outside, but the rooms were awesome. We changed into bathing suits with our regular clothes over the top, and headed over to the other side of the island, to the resort beaches.

The western side of Maui is the leeward side, and Lahaina is the biggest town (it’s 22 miles from Kahului to Lahaina). North of there, it’s mostly beach resorts. We drove to Kaanapali and found the well-hidden public beach access. For late afternoon on the fourth of July, it wasn’t terribly crowded. The beach was a few miles long with golden sand, and we could see both Lanai and Molokini Crater from there.

kaanapali beach

Now, I haven’t gone swimming since I was in high school, and my skin crawls at the mere thought of putting on a bathing suit. But, dammit, I was in Hawaii, and I was going to swim in the ocean. We laid out our towels and bags, and as Stephanie stood there telling me how she really didn’t want people there to see her in a bathing suit, I ripped off my clothes and ran into the ocean.

It was wonderful. There were big waves coming in, so we jumped around in them and fought against the current. I didn’t like walking in the seaweed that was 20 feet out from the shore, so I started swimming up and down the beach. Stephanie got caught by a big wave and yelled at the top of her lungs, “IT’S PULLING ME OUT TO SEA!!!” I laughed so hard I almost drowned.

We watched the sun set over the ocean again, then decided it was time to head to Lahaina for fireworks. We showered and rode back into town wearing our towels, then got dressed in a parking lot. We went to a little outdoor taco place with 800 varieties of salsa, and took turns going to the bathroom on the other side of the strip mall to wash up. While we were at Starbucks getting the critically-important evening coffee, we heard the fireworks starting. We walked a block down to the main street and found an open spot from which we could see them being fired from the harbor. The fireworks were OK; they were the same standard seen in most places in the country, set to painfully-cheesy patriotic hits such as Born in the U.S.A.. However, it was incredible being there in a huge crowd of people from all over the world, gathered in that little town on Maui.

As the fireworks were ending, a couple teenagers tossed a big firecracker into the middle of a bunch of people. A woman yelled, “MY BABY!!!” exactly in that way panicked women yelled, “MY BABY!!!” in superhero cartoons of my youth. Apparently, it went off too close to her kid’s stroller for comfort. She set her husband on the teenager, and a fight started. Then the shrieky lady was crying, trying to hold her husband and his flying fists away from the stupid kids. The whole group of them had had way too much to drink. Then the cops became involved, and the fun ended.

We wandered in and out of shops along Front Street. I liked Lahaina for its touristy but not-too-tacky atmosphere; it reminded me of a clean version of New Orleans. There were a bunch of surf shops, 10 or so ABC Stores (about 5% of what Waikiki has), various galleries and souvenir shops, and lots of restaurants. I bought some clothes and a bamboo purse. We decided to come back to Lahaina during the day to see the rest of the sights, so we headed back to the car. On the drive back to Kahului, we noticed THE STARS. I had never seen the sky like that before. It was late and we were tired, so we decided to save that for another night as well. We went back to the hotel, showered sand out of our butt cracks, and went to sleep.

tuesday 07.05.2005 (day six: maui)

Posted in hawaii on July 25th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: beach, hawaii, kahului, lahaina, maui, ocean, wailea

Our first full day on Maui was dedicated to relaxing, which is sometimes a challenge for us on vacation. We put off volcano-climbing til the next day, and headed out to see what else was going on around Maui.

We drove south to the resort areas of Kihei and Wailea. Wailea appeared not to have a real town at all; we drove around on the winding drives through resort complexes for miles before finally finding a gas station (in Kihei, conveniently attached to an ABC Store).

We drove back to the superfancy mall in Wailea right as it opened, because Stephanie wanted to go to Tiffany, and also (this may come as a surprise), we’re fans of shopping. I was vastly amused at Tiffany, because we got some attitude presumably because of how we were dressed. If there’s anything snobby salespeople should have learned from the tech boom, it’s that sometimes even slobs have a lot of cash to spend. It’s funny.

The mall had pretty good shops, at least of the chain variety. There were the usual surf shops, souvenir stores, 8 or 9 ABC Stores, and a store selling tons of Paul Frank merchandise. I found the new version of my black skull flipflops, and purchased them with great excitement.

We had read in the travel guide about a highly-rated restaurant called Seawatch, but had trouble finding it in the maze of resort-streets (they’re not like real streets, they’re meant to confuse you into giving up and staying there forever). After two phone calls, we located it in the clubhouse at the Wailea Golf Club. Now that was some funny shit.

We sat out on the veranda, totally out of place and amused. The server had never heard the word ‘vegetarian’, so I got a not-very-good salad, but the view of the ocean was worth it. I had never in my life spent time at a golf course like that, let alone an exclusive one on Maui. It was too entertaining.

We drove back up the coast, stopping in Lahaina for coffee and to visit Hilo Hattie, because it’s the most famous tacky tourist shop in the universe (well, barring maybe Wall Drug and South of the Border), and I felt, after seeing no fewer than a million ads for it, that we should visit. I later discovered that Hilo Hattie is also located in places like Orlando and Las Vegas (as are ABC Stores), still selling Hawaiian souvenirs. I kind of love that.

We drove further up the coast, past Kaanapali Beach and the man still standing on the side of the highway dressed as a cow, complete with a giant rubber udder. We were in search of the top-rated beach on Maui, along the north shore. Kapalua is another resort community, but they’ve provided public access from one area, if you’re lucky enough to find it. Well, we’re determined, so we did.

kapalua beach

We cut through the resort, speedily evading the Jesus-freak who told me I was beautiful and should not be afraid to touch him. We snuck into the bathrooms at the resort and changed into our beach gear, then headed through the pool area and down to the beach. The resort lawn had a giant pool complex with waterfalls, pool and other game tables on the lawn, two bars, a massage booth, and beach chairs, umbrellas, and cabanas everywhere. It was pretty amazing. The beach was a smallish c-shaped inlet, with perfect-colored water and warm sand. We laid out for an hour or so, and I spent a lot of that time staring up through the palm trees at the sky.

the world’s largest banyan tree

We headed back down the coast and stopped in Lahaina again to get drinks and to witness the most gigantic banyan tree ever. It was so large that I hadn’t realized it was just one tree when I drove past it before; I just thought the courthouse had a grove planted in front of it. It’s one tree that takes up an entire city block. There was no way to fit it all in one photo.

On the way back across the island to the Kahului side, we stopped at a roadside fruit stand so I could buy papayas and a pineapple. The man there barely spoke English, and would yell, NO CHEMEEKAL! in response to whatever question I asked. By the time I returned to the car, I had adopted his bizarre accent, and couldn’t stop talking that way. I still catch myself doing it constantly. Do not do this. It ees kapu. It gave me a really bad headache, and still amuses the hell out of me.

pineapple transport

We drove back down to Paia to check out the shops I had put on the mental must-visit list the day before. A lot of them had already closed (since stores and restaurants in Hawaii open and close whenever they feel like it), but I found one awesome one with a maneki neko sarong in the window. It was pretty expensive and I have little use for a sarong in Minnesota, so I decided to pass. I got a glass neko ornament for my xmas tree instead. This didn’t stop me from obsessing about the sarong, however, because it was beautiful.

west maui mountains

Back in Kahului, we pored through the travel guide in search of restaurants that looked promising for vegetarian folks. Usually I have trouble at Italian restaurants, but the menu at Marco’s Deli seemed awesome. We arrived and found this very popular place that looked straight out of 30’s Chicago. It was awesome, and the food and service were great. I ate too much of an Italian vegetable sandwich, and returned to the hotel wanting to die of fullness.

wednesday 07.06.2005 (day seven: maui)

Posted in hawaii on July 25th, 2005 by jenni | No Comments »
Tags: hawaii, hiking, lahaina, maui, national parks, volcano

We stopped for picnic fare at Down To Earth and headed up the side of Haleakala. The route between Kahului and the volcano takes you through upcountry Maui, which is another term for ‘Wyoming’. It’s truly bizarre to see cactus and cattle farms in the middle of a tropical island.

It’s a 25-mile drive up the side of the mountain, and we encountered several bike tours coming down. People pack in vans and shuttle to the top of the volcano to see the sunrise, then get outfitted with bicycles and ride down. Seeing those guides, I seriously considered the possibility of moving there and taking up that career. Damn web development for being so lucrative.

silversword

We drove up to the summit, at over 10,000 feet. It took me a few minutes to lose the altitude-dizziness. From the top, you can see 360 degrees around the whole island; the West Maui mountains, the valley in the middle, Lanai, Molokai, Molokini, and even the Big Island far off in the distance. I was cold in my hoodie and capris, but figured I’d warm up while hiking.

We saw the extremely rare silversword plant, which can take up to 50 years to bloom, and is only found on Hawaii. The leaves are truly silver. We were glad to see a single plant in full bloom.

haleakala

We drove down a little ways to the vistor center and trailhead. Both of our travel guides had advised us to avoid the Sliding Sands Trail, but we’re not always great at resisting a challenge.

sliding sands trail

One can take the trail all the way across the park; it’s a two-day hike, so most people pack camping equipment. We just wanted to go down into the crater, so we brought our food and tons of water (having learned from the last volcanic adventure). We had warm clothes and even a first-aid kit.

The first part of the trail, we had to pick our way around horse poop, so the beginning of the hike was alarmingly stinky. Descending into the crater, the trail was fine volcanic gravel and dust, just slightly less difficult than walking on sand. I had the sense that if I stepped off the trail, I would go sliding down the steep hill into a crater and never be seen again.

The thing I like about this kind of adventure (i.e. the kind of thing not everyone in the world gets to experience) is how other people act when you encounter them. Everyone says hi. Everyone is friendly. Everyone wants to talk about what they’ve seen just a mile down the path, or to encourage you with ‘you’re almost there!’ When a pack of horse-riders passed going uphill, every single person greeted us. It’s something you don’t see very often, which is sad.

cheaters!

We walked and walked and sometimes slid our way down the trail, constantly aware that the climb back up was infinitely harder, and supposed to take twice as long. After about three miles, we decided we should probably start heading back. We only had so much water. As we decreased in altitude, it had warmed up somewhat.

above the clouds

The climb back up was brutal. I discovered that if I walked at my usual hiking pace, I’d be painfully out of breath within a matter of 20 paces. It was a combination of the altitude, the steepness of the climb, and the fact that it was like walking on sand. I finally figured out that if I climbed really slowly, at a very constant pace, I could focus on keeping my breathing regular and not feel like I was about to have a stroke.

It’s a lot easier for me to keep moving constantly than stop and rest at regular intervals, so I’d do as long a walk as I could manage, then stop and wait. I noticed that even the people who appeared to be really seasoned hikers, totally tricked out with all the right gear and walking poles, were still moving at a snail’s pace up the mountain. That made me feel a lot better about the fitness I was starting to question. It was one of the most physically demanding things I’d ever done, second only to the Breast Cancer 3Day.

more of those stone-stacks

It was fascinating to see the differences between Haleakala and Kilauea. We had walked on new lava — not just new in terms of geologic time, but fresh lava, still cooling. The terrain around Haleakala was completely different, having had eons to weather. Half of the Big Island still looks very much volcanic, with little vegetation, and huge fields of lava. Everything except the actual crater is fairly overgrown on Maui, and the lava flows in the ocean are eroded into sharp rocks forming tidepools along the shore.

no spectre of the brocken

We were pleasantly surprised to actually survive that hike. We dragged ourselves back to the parking lot, and changed into more comfortable, not-lava-filled shoes at the car. I squatted to stretch my thighs, pulling my arms up behind me, and promptly got a massive cramp between my collarbones, something I’ve never had the joy of experiencing before. We washed volcano dust off our faces and arms in the bathroom, then drove back down the mountain to the another overlook.

The Leleiwi Overlook is one of three places on the planet (the others are in Scotland and Germany) where the Spectre of the Brocken can sometimes be witnessed. If the clouds roll into the crater valley close to sunset, you can sometimes see your gigantic shadow on them, surrounded by a rainbow.

i’m convinced nene are a myth.

We drove back down to Kahului, and went to check out Queen Kaahumanu Center, the big mall that was described in the book as looking like something out of Star Wars. We had trouble with the name, so we just called it Queen Kamehameha Center. Stephanie had a fascination with Hawaiian Macy’s; I expressed my feelings by suddenly having an overwhelming need to vomit, presumably from having eating vegetable chips an hour before. I’ve never rushed through a store to the bathrooms so quickly. That was some excitement I surely didn’t need.

i take this photo on every vacation. unsexy hiking hair.

The mall was, well, eh. It did have a cool futuristic canopy-thing, but the stores were traditional and, on reflection, I believe it was absolutely lacking in ABC Stores, which explains a lot. It didn’t have any decent restaurants, either, so we came up with another plan: we’d go back to Lahaina. We’d been joking constantly about Cheeseburger in Paradise since we’d first seen it, because I assumed from the name that it was another Jimmy Buffett restaurant like Margaritaville, which fills me with rage for no good reason except for the whole parrothead thing. But we knew they had two kinds of gardenburger there, and some goofy touristy entertainment on that order is always amusing. (Later we found out it had nothing to do with Jimmy Buffett at all except for the name. Whew.)

the a-frame hotel

We stopped at the hotel to shower first, because we were nasty. I didn’t even realize how filthy I was until I scrubbed and scrubbed and still managed to get black dirt all over the towel when I dried off. There was volcano dust in our eyes, ears, and noses. Yuck.

For the big Cheeseburger moment, I decided to wear a skirt. This probably amuses only me, but it was funny. We drove to Lahaina and waited in line outside along the ocean for half an hour, eavesdropping on the very very annoying east-coast family, praying we wouldn’t have to sit near them. We ended up seated at a shared table between a group of four who did a lot of staring but not talking, and a couple who talked a lot.

They were from Philadelphia, and were supposed to have arrived in Maui two days before, but had instead gotten in the previous night. They told us the horror story of their flight: layover in New York, layover in Texas, emergency landing for a sick passenger in Phoenix, long refueling, then finally reaching Maui. The girl told us she was terrified of flying, and actually screamed when they encountered turbulence. All of a sudden, I didn’t mind our hour-long delay at all. (Not that it made me hate Northwest Airlines any less).

We had dinner and talked to them for a long time afterward. On the way back to Kahului, we stopped at the overlook to see the stars. They were unbelievable. We could clearly see the Milky Way, and were able to pick out constellations we wouldn’t see that time of year in the north. I saw two shooting stars, three planets, and some airplanes I tried to convince Stephanie were really slow-moving comets. We went back to the hotel, packed our bags, and I showered again to remove the rest of Haleakala from my hair.