maui wowi part 2

TUESDAY, August 18th

The road to Hana! This was one of the first things I knew I wanted to do on this trip back when my parents first asked us to begin brainstorming activities, etc. to do. I had done it just once before, I was probably about 6, with my parents, Aunt Tina, Uncle Ron, and cousins Michael and Nicholas. It was my first ever long road trip and I remember being traumatized about having to pee on the side of the road. Good times on "Tradewind Tours".... :)

Hana is a tiny, isolated community on the eastern side of Maui. Hana itself is not really a sight to see-it is very small with not many actual attractions.The point of going to Hana is the journey there, it is almost 70 miles, though it typically takes about 3 hours to get there. The highway has approximately 620 turns and crosses 59 bridges, 46 of which are just one lane (requiring one of the cars to yield) The drive is slow going, but very beautiful. You are driving through lush scenery and even a tropical rain forest, with tons of waterfalls and scenic lookouts along the way. As you get closer to Hana there are many beautiful beaches to check out, with black, red, and white sand. I think some of the most beautiful sights we saw on our whole trip were on this day, it was breathtaking!

Our first stop on the journey was in Paia at HANA PICNIC LUNCH COMPANY (no website). Kind of a little inside joke, I will explain. Every time we go to Maui we grab all the travel brochures we can find, often times they have restaurant reviews, coupons, activity ideas, etc. Well, there was one magazine with this big section all about going to Hana. And in every single article they mentioned this HANA PICNIC LUNCH COMPANY. They must have some kind of contract with Maui Driving Magazine. :) There was even a full page ad in the middle of the Hana section. So anyway, it just became this big joke, and everytime you say HANA PICNIC LUNCH COMPANY you have to say it in a big announcers voice. Well, I do anyway. :) Maybe you had to be there.... Anyway they made us some yummy sandwiches and good smoothies, so I like 'em!

We drove along our merry way and made a few stops. I don't remember/know the names of everything, so please forgive me. :)

Waterfall #1!

On the hike to water fall #1, I seriously got eaten alive by mosquitos, probably about 25 bites on both my legs. I forgot to bring bug spray [stupid] and was reminded when they were selling it at HANA PICNIC LUNCH COMPANY (there I go again). Fortunately, I have impecable self-control and didn't scratch them AT ALL, so they really went away after a day.

Anyway, I decided to avoid trapsing through tropical jungles for the rest of the day and sent Daniel to take pictures for us (not that it mattered since all those pictures are still on Daniel's dead hard-drive. grrr).

Daniel snapping some nature shots

Bamboo!

Cool tree

Waterfall #2! (through the trees)

Random peacock just wandering around! I didn't even miss the waterfall this time because I was fascinated by the wild peacock!

Waterfall #3!

So all along the road to Hana random people set up there awesome stands where the sell beautiful flowers, FRESH fruit (coconuts, pineapples, bananas, mangos), homemade banana bread, coconut chips, and all kinds of awesome hawaiian snacks. We ended up stopping at this one, which happened to be at the halfway point of our journey!

We ran into a little traffic...(construction). Fortunately, we didn't have to wait too long. :)

It definitely rained as we passed through the rain forest! :)

Black sand beach...SO BEAUTIFUL

It was so pretty. The sand was super soft and smooth. Half of the beach was still these smooth lava rock pebbles, so when a wave would go over the rocks it made the cookest spa/waterfall noise. We took a video, but it is trapped on Daniel's dead hard-drive.

hottie with a body! (wearing pants b/c he burned his legs the first day lounging by the pool for too long without flipping over)

A little candid shot of being excited at the beach. :)

BEAUTIFUL

Now this one is a red sand beach. A little more "over-rated". I guess I was just expecting the sand to be RED...it was more red/oranged tinted, and at times didn't really look that different from regular yellow/gold sand. Oh well. :)

So this beach is MAYBE Hamoa Bay, where we spent most of the afternoon trying not to die in the massive waves. These massive waves were a couple hundred yards to the left of where this picture was taken:

Maybe the pictures don't do them justice, but the waves were insane, definitely the biggest I have ever been in the water with. There were 3x as many surfers than body surfers, because the waves were just beating people up and slamming them to the ground.

Venturing out into the ocean...sweet mid-action shot of a guy diving on the left.

Jenny recovering from the waves assult on her body, the boys were better off...

Jenny deciding it is best to stay in knee deep water - trust me, it was still plenty exciting. :) You can see Dad and Daniel a little further out...they made it past a wave it seems which was an HUGE accomplishment. Jenny never really made it past the first wave.

Good depiction of the first crest to get over.

Even if you tried to dive under the waves, it still was bringing you back to the shore. The people with fins and body boards (and clearly the surfboarders) were having the best luck.

See, you still get beat up, even in the shallow end. Love Daniel's graceful leap over the wave, trying to get to the real waves. :)

Again, you can see the first crest of waves that had to be jumped over. The bobbing head is not a seal, its a Tobin; Jim (Dad) to be exact!

The goal was to get to the second level of waves and ride them into shore. When they got to this second level the water would literally throw them 20 feet to shore if they were facing it incorrectly. Several times Daniel started to ride one in only to have the wave completely flip him over underwater-not fun, and then drive him into the sandy bottom.

Daniel trying to catch a big wave...

As you may have noticed, no pictures of Hana. Hana was in between the black sand beach and the red sand beach, but seriously, there is nothing to take pictures of. After we were tired, beat up, and sore (my dad even had a shoulder injury!!) we began the journey back home. Not so many stops this time, just in Paia for dinner at Flatbread Pizza Company. Really great food, all of the ingredients they use are organic and they even try and use local produce as much as they can! Very cool. Crazy side note: as I was looking up the website to link to for the blog I realized there were multiple Flatbread restaurants. And imagine where they all are (aside from the one we went to in Maui) NEW ENGLAND. Yep, 2 in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, etc. Crazy, crazy. The pizza was bomb so we will definitely try and go again to one here.