Hey everyone! So sorry to have given the "silent treatment’…I just returned from Maui last night. It was fun, and my first time there. All went well except for yesterday, we decided that we’d fill our day with a trip on the Road to Hana, a day spent swimming one of the many Black Sand Beaches of Hana, then a drive back to the Kahului Airport for our 8pm flight home to Oahu.
Bottom line: I got sick about 2/3 the way into Hana on the windy road to Hana. Tried to “man up” at the beautiful Black Sand Beach. Saw lots of black crabs, neat fishes in the dark murky water. It rained there, and I love the rain, it was beautiful.
Hana is such a small, tiny, isolated town. Its biggest business there is the Hana Ranch- oh, and the itsy bitsy Hana Airport. It has a town center which is the size of 1/2 of a small shopping center. There were nice houses there, as well as many, many gorgeous waterfront estates and many many large, custom ranch estates on sprawling pasture hillsides overlooking the ocean. I wondered what people did to survive there, as there really isn’t industry, businesses, etc? People must either go there with their millions, or have lived there all their lives on property that had been passed down from generation to generation.
Back to the car sickness. I had a diet soda and felt a bit better, so we headed back on the almost three hour drive back to civilization. That’s when the fun really began. At least my stomach was relatively empty and I only dry heaved! And the friggen Vertigo…can you say “Ralph” a hundred times fast??? OK, I’m done whining. Just want to illustrate the point that we’re NOT doing the Road to Hana ever again!
Maui’s a big island. So much to see, I can’t even describe in one day. It’s soooo lush, tropical, beautiful. It’s very different from where I live on Oahu, as Oahu is very densely populated. Maui has long expanses of just lush, tropical Hawaii-ness. And a lot of old history is everywhere, especially in Lahaina.
Speaking of Lahaina, Maui, I loved Lahaina! It’s so quaint yet full of everything you can imagine- Art, Shopping, Restaurants, Walking Tours, Historic Sites, Sailboats, the Ocean. The town itself was once the imperial center under the Kamehameha dynasty…remnants of the Kamehameha house still remain there. Centuries ago, ancient Polynesians arrived via canoe to Maui via the Lahaina port. Then after Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778, circa 1800, caucasian Missionaries and Whaler’s began arriving. At one point in the mid-1800’s there were up to 400 ships docked and 1,500 sailors in Lahaina town at any one time. One can imagine the drunken mayhem in 1800’s Lahaina. We even visited an old, empty prison there that was used to lock away out of control drunken soldiers and Hawaiians for the night, until they sobered up…sounds a bit like the ER, eh??
The highlight of my trip…well, I love Hiking. While we didn’t know our way around very well, we did find something so breathtaking…the 'Iao Needle. It’s in the mountains above Wailuku, and the site of an ancient battle between Hawaiians in King Kamehameha’s quest to unite the islands. The needle itself, a steep mountainous rock formation, many warriors climbed and hid, in order to escape the wrath of the King. Many of those whom weren’t successful at hiding ended up their bodies clogging the flowing stream nearby, there were so many bodies and so much blood that it’s said the waters ran red for days.
We ended up walking around the site, and found a pool at the bottom of a waterfall, where we went swimming in the icy, crystal clear water. That was indeed the best part of the vacation…cooling off in a gorgeous pool of fresh mountain water in one of the most paradise-like tropical places imaginable. Wow.
Aloooha!
Sorry you got sick. 
