Maui Explored: Road to Hana

Ahhh, the road to Hana. Long and windy. Green and blue. Waterfalls and calm beaches. And probably caused the most near death experiences of our trip. Lets make it clear that "highway" in this instance implies death defying cliffs more so than a high speed expressway.

As a preliminary statement, we will give a lot of credit for activities, hikes, and restaurants to a travel book entitled Maui Revealed. The book presents an untainted review of what to do and what not do on the island. Apparently there is a guidebook for each major island (don't quote me, Katie did most of the navigating and reading as we drove along). For the most part we stuck to the book. Thank you to Katie's cousin, Adam, the book was an excellent call.

The drive to Hana is how we choose to spend our New Years Eve. The road has to be one of the most picturesque drives in the US; offering views of black, red, and brown sand beaches, from sea level to 1000' cliffs overlooking bays. There are countless waterfalls and lush green mountain sides. I think I reached a state of eye orgasm on this road. It is also the only road to Hana, offering narrow roads full of gawking tourists, driving 30 mph around hairpin turns that would turn Mario Andretti's knuckles white. We embarked upon the trip in a torrential downpour, driving an oversized, four-door Jeep Wrangler, twice the size of my Mazda. It was a fun ride in and of itself. The road is stocked with picture perfect waterfalls. We saw about half of them on the way out then saw many more on subsequent commuter drives to other sites.

Here is an example of the rain we saw! Soggy Wet!

There were a number of cars doing the drive with us which made pulling over for a picture a bit difficult and dangerous. Often the road was very narrow (literally one lane) with many switchbacks while overlooking a turquoise beaches. We found that the rainy weather made for some great views, blanketing the mountains and trees in misty clouds, but cutting out some of the blazingly sunny views.