Category: Family

The last three days of our recent vacation were spent on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

< Maui Maui seems like the one-stop destination of the state, offering both the high-end shopping and resort life of Oahu and the outdoor activities of The Big Island. Because we'd already been to both Oahu and The Big Island we were a little underwhelmed. This may also be due to the fact we were very tired by this point. While out hotel (yellow star on map) was lovely, the developers of the resort area of Kaanapaali had seen fit to place every large hotel in the exact same spot, which gave the area a distinctly artificial and overdeveloped feel (in direct contrast to the organic tourism of Hawaii). Even so, it was immediately obvious that Maui was the location-of-choice for (American) honeymooners and those that take regular vacations to Hawaii. Because of this, and if you only have a few days to spend, Maui may be the best place to see most of what Hawaii has to offer. If you have a longer itinerary though, I'd suggest Oahu and The Big Island and skipping Maui. We only had two full days on Maui, and the one thing we really needed to do was drive the famous 'Road to Hana'. This is a highway that hugs the northeastern coast of the island for about 30 miles. Short though it may be, it is one of the most winding highways in the world and takes over 2 hours to drive. The turns are blind; the road narrow but the scenery breathtaking...   < Hana Highway   

The road (allegedly) has 617 turns and 58 one lane bridges. Many sections of the road are one-lane as well, and a good portion of the turns are blind (some are blind, one-lane turns). As a popular tourist drive the road is well travelled and very well maintained, so it’s not dangerous (more exciting). Besides, everyone drives slowly to take in the views, including waterfalls, lovely ocean vistas, wildlife (we passed two large wild pigs just hanging out on the roadside) and a lengthy stretch where a ceiling of massive bamboo covers the road.

The town of Hana, at the end of the road, is not much. And since there is no road wrapping around the SE corner of Maui, one must take the Hana highway back to civilization again (so is you choose to drive it, you commit to doing it both ways). We did however, stop at a state park near Hana which features a beautiful black-sand beach:

  < Disrespectin' Nature The rest of our short Maui trip was simply relaxing, souvenir shopping, eating some of the best fish I've ever tasted ('Ono') and watching edge-of-our-seat Japanese drama's on the hotel TV (Hawaii has a Japanese TV channel, Kiku TV). < Last Evening Sunset Oh yes, in our Maui hotel we were only a couple of rooms down the hall from where The Devil stays, during his Hawaii sojourns... < Satan's Room

The next five days of our trip were spent on the largest of the Hawaiian Islands, known as Hawai’i (and often called ‘The Big Island’ to avoid confusion with the state name):

< Hawai'i Our hotel (located at the yellow star on the above map) was called the Outrigger Keahou Resort, and was the best hotel of our vacation. Not for amenities or the beach, but for the fact it was located on tidal rockpools that contained a wealth of sea life. You can see the extent of the rockpools in the image taken from Google Earth:

One could look down from the patio into the pools and sea all manner of brightly coloured tropical fish, as well as more exotic creatures such as eels and turtles. Every time we passed through the open air lobby we made it a habit to see what was there (a large puffer fish seemed to resident just south of the patio) and during low tides we’d clamber over the rocks for a closer look.

Hawai’i was the most laid-back part of a trip. If I were to characterize the island in terms of tourism, I’d say it caters to the tourist more interested in getting out-and-about. While the area we stayed in (near Kona) had it’s fair share of tourist oriented attractions (such as snorkel cruises or helicopter rental companies) Hawai’i also has a great deal to offer to those who rent a car and hit the road. As we did.

On our second day we visited Volcanoes National Park (red star on the map). Before you ask – no we saw no actual flowing lava. But the evidence of recent flows (and I mean ‘recent’ in the planetary sense) was impossible to miss. The landscape in the park is alien, with large sections devoid of any vegetation (or apparent life). The scent of sulphur is in the air, and a feeling of imminence – these volcanoes are not extinct, after all – lingers.

The middle and rightmost images show the crater believed by Hawai’ians to be the home of their fire god Pele. The lei, placed on the edge of the crater is an offering to her. Believers also leave piles of rock around the park in offering. If I recall correctly, Pele’s caldera has not had molten lava in it for about 30 years (which is no time at all in the geological scale).

The volcanoes are still spewing lava, but the current flow is not near the tourist locations. Determined hikers can potentially see lava though, but as you can see one must be very prepared (including for disappointment):

< How to see lava Also in the volcanoes park we visited an ancient lava tube, which is a tunnel left behind by an underground lava flow. Thursten Lava Tube is located in an area of dense tropical jungle (mostly ferns), heavily populated by various types of birds. It was a strange contrast to the dead lavarock plains of only five minutes away.

A company called Atlantis Submarines offers submarine cruises on each of the three main Hawaiian Islands, and we went on one while on the Big Island:

We went down to 107 feet during the hour-long cruise, and it was really, really cool. Absolutely one of the highlights of the entire vacation. If you are ever in an opportunity to do this (they run subs at 14 locations worldwide) then I recommend it highly!

We also drove up around the north coast to the town of Hilo. The scenery on the northern side (blue star) of the island reminded me much of the Australian country (such as around Maitland). This is where the Hawaiian cowboys live, and much of the land is taken up with enormous cattle ranches. Furthermore, eucalyptus trees are to be seen in this area, and the warm climate is not as tempered by the sea breezes as closer to the coast.

The main reason we drove over to Hilo was to see some notable waterfalls (green star), and even though the rainfall had been low we weren’t disappointed. The rightmost image shows Akaka Falls, over 400 feet in height, and the leftmost shows Rainbow Falls (considerably shorter):

< Falling water Here's some shots for my parents benefit, of a very famous (and very tiny) catholic church just a couple of minutes walk north of our hotel:

The lavarocks next to this church harbored a colony of tiny black mice…

Sometime in the 19th Century, mongooses were introduced to Hawaii in an attempt to curb the rat population (rats themselves being unwanted invaders that originally immigrated to Hawaii via the European ships). However the mongooses are diurnal, and the rats nocturnal, and never the twain have either met. The mongooses apparently took to Hawaii, and they can now be seen in the wild with about the same frequency as we see squirrels here in the northeast. (To put an Australian slant on that, they are about as common as…um….er…..galahs maybe?)

And last but not least, here’s a shot of a really, really fat dog:

The Big Island was great. For us, it was the best of the three island, perhaps because it was the most relaxing, perhaps due to the amazing breakfast buffet put on by our restaurant (and for which we received ten free tickets, covering our entire stay). If I was ever going to go to Hawaii for any significant length of time (such as to live), my destination would be The Big Island.