Maui, Day 6

Straight to the pictures here.

Day 6 Dawned, well, it dawned cloudy. That didn’t stop us, however, from a lot of fun. We started out heading back to Honolua Bay; not to snorkel this time, but simply to enjoy the lush forest area, take some pictures and climb some vines. Aside from the climbing, Julie also grabbed a couple of passion-fruits and popped them open to expose their lovely innards…no, we didn’t partake of the goodness.

Following Honolua, we headed north, continuing along the highway and enjoying the changing scenery. That is one thing that we discovered about Maui – it is an extremely diverse island where you can enjoy lush tropical areas, beaches, arid dry lands, waterfalls, and so much more. The island has two big volcanoes on it; one on the northish side, the other on the southish side. In both cases, the Windward side of the island is extremely tropical complete with cascading waterfalls, and lots of rain. The Leeward sides of the mountains are much drier; (and, no big surprise that most of the tourist spots are on the leeward side).

Ok, back to our day – we headed north and next stopped at the olivine pools. The pools were cool, but would have been a whole lot neater if the sun had been out. Still, worth the stop and we also managed to find another small blow-hole. We kept going into the small village of Kahakuloa, where we stopped for some of the “world’s best banana bread.” To be sure, it was good, but there were about 4-5 places on the island that bragged about their bread…hard to say who’s was best.

It was at this point we realized we could drive around the entire north coast; something that wasn’t open back in 2002 when we honeymooned here. Since the weather was not improving, we decided to go for it. The drive was nice and we enjoyed the changing scenery and the small village or two that we passed.

Eventually we made to the city of Wailuku; not much to write home about (for all of you who want to move to Maui, Wailuku is probably a place you could find affordable housing). Wailuku didn’t have much going for it, but we did manage to find a place to stop for lunch before heading to the “Io Needle.” The pictures in the guide-book were amazing; the needle itself left something to be desired. It was extremely crowded with a couple of tourist buses and signs everywhere telling you to stay on the path. The aggravating part was that there were numerous foot-paths heading off in other directions that were SO tempting to take…another time, maybe.

On our way back to our hotel we did two more things; one, we stopped at the Petroglyphs which are just south of Lahaina. This was a real highlight for both of us, especially Julie. Many of these petroglyphs are hundreds of years old. We were the only ones there for most of our time and we walked around looking at many of them, trying to determine which ones were authentic and which ones might be a little graffiti. After the petroglyphs, our plan was to headed back into town for a little beach time.

Straight to the pictures here.