Highway to Hana

For years I've heard of the "Road to Hana" and the beauty it holds, as well as the crazy drive it entails.  When deciding what to do on Maui, it seemed like a nice activity to do to see a lot of Maui.  We decided to rent a convertible for the drive to take it all in and we used an app on my phone that linked to the GPS called Gyspy.  It was a really neat app because it was narrated by a tour guide to give you some history of the drive and island while telling you good places to stop and see things.

The house we were staying at was already about 3 miles into the Hana Highway.  The length of the Hana Highway is 64 miles consisting of about 620 curves (some VERY tight) and 59 bridges (46 one lane bridges).  Luckily the traffic was not too bad when we went because I can only imagine how backed up things can get when it's busy.  Tourists tend to drive slow, taking everything in, while the locals seem to want to fly by.  We even pulled off a few times to let people pass and not feel rushed.

Our app was good about telling us "must see" stops, stops that were nice, and stops that were just okay.  We got out at a few waterfalls, but we wanted to see a lot so we didn't really go down to any or go swimming at any of them.  There isn't much room to park along the Hana Highway, so we frequently had to park a good ways off from what we wanted to see and hike back.

One of the must-see spots was an arboretum.  It was along a little creek and had many of the indegenous tropical plants labeled and easy to see.  Our favorite was the rainbow eucaliptis which has a red, green, and tan trunk.  It was so colorful and beautiful.  At the end of the garden was a small taro farm.  Taro is a staple here in the Hawaiian diet (used to make poi) and grows best in cool and flowing water.

We also stopped in a small town called Ke'anae.  We actually stopped here for lunch and it was a neat little community.  It had a a few houses, a small church, and a couple of small stores and stands.  It also has a fairly large taro farm community.  Unfortunately, this entire village was decimated in 1946 when a tsunami wiped out the area.  This tsunami got the ball rolling to create the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which interestingly enough is located just down the road from us in Ewa Beach.

Our next stop was the Wai'anapanapa Park.  Here, we saw a nice black sand beach, caves that connected to the ocean, blow holes and arches from the lava rock formations.  If we were to come through here again, I would love to spend more time here.  All we really had time for was to stop, see it, appreciate it, and move on.

Once we made to Hana, our guide on the app recommended we keep going past Hana to see another big waterafall (Wailua Falls) and to see the Seven Sacred Pools in the Haleakala National Park in Kipahulu.  Much to our dismay, we were disappointed in these stops.  The waterfall was almost non-existent and there were much more beautiful ones along the route to Hana.  The Seven Sacred Pools were okay, but it cost $15 to get into the park and we hadn't planned on going swimming.  Even if we had, it was dark, muddy water and wasn't flowing very steadily (I'm too paranoid about getting leptosporosis from stagnant water).  The park was 45 minutes past Hana, adding 1.5 hours to our trip.  We ended up not having time to get out and explore around Hana because of the additional time and just had to do a "drive through".  We had dinner reservations at Mama's Fish House that night we did not want to miss.

On the drive back, we didn't stop at any of the sites and the guide gave us more history of the island instead of telling us places to stop.  It was an absolutely beautiful drive and I really enjoyed having a convertible to take it all in around us.  It is definitely not a drive for people that easily get car sick.  I get a little woozy, so I drove.  Luckily Joe is a trooper and had no problems riding.  It's also a drive that you need to pay close attention to.  As a sad reminder of that, we passed a jeep that had rolled at one of the curves that had tourists in it.  Luckily no one was seriously injured, but the closest fire, police and rescue are in Hana or Paia in the other direction, so it takes a really long time for help to get there.  So if you just take it slow, expect to spend plenty of time (we took about 7 hours), and are ready to just take in the beauty of nautre, it's a great drive through the Maui rainforest.