Highway to Hana

4:26 in the (Friday) morning here in Honolulu as I start writing; our flight is at 7, so we'll be off to the airport in about 45 minutes. Everything is ready to go, but we were up before the alarm, so a bit of blogging comes your way.

Let's go waaaaaaaaaaaaay back to Monday when Kim and Francis loaded us all into their convertible and drove the road to Hana and back. The drive is a wild and scenic one on Maui's North Shore. The turns are sharp and numerous. The bridges are one-lane and numerous. Sitting in the back seat was already something of a nail-biter, and I'm am greatly impressed that Kim and Francis managed the drive so smoothly because let me tell you, some of the others on that road were a little too fast and careless for my liking! Oh, you didn't know I was a little old lady at heart? Sorry.

We didn't leave the hotel as early as the guidebooks suggested, but we didn't encounter bad traffic either. We'd been told the day before that the earthquake had knocked out a bridge somewhere after Hana, so that solved the issue of whether to risk taking the rental car over the at-times poor road arond the south of the island.

A beach just east of Pa'ia was our first stop, watching the surfers and surf-casting fishermen, oohing and aahing as a few large sea turtles poked their heads up just offshore. A glorious start.

The road then started its torturous course. It wasn't without its rewards: the many waterfalls along the way are lovely stopping points as were some of the shoreline viewpoints. It rained some, especially as we got higher up. But then, that's what keeps everything so lush and green. We passed through bamboo forest (I think) and saw some lovely blooms in places. At the Halfway to Hana Stand (a misnomer) we stopped for some warm and sweet banana bread and mostly avoided using the utterly disgusting portable restrooms.

Hana? Not much to it. If you were doing a drive around the island or had a lot of time, it would be a relaxing, remote place to stay a night or two. As a destination on the drive, though, it was a little anticlimactic, and the food choices were severely limited. We quickly turned round.

Shortly outside Hana on the way back we drove down to near the water through the settlement of Nahiku. This was a worthwhile diversion as the play of waves on the rocks and shore was remarkable. It might have been the best scenery all trip.

By 4:15 we were back near Pa'ia, so we stopped for dinner at Mama's Fish House. I'll blog food separately, I think, so skipping the dinner there, it was a sunset drive back to Lahaina. We'd actually had sun for the most part that day; the rain was the only bit we encountered while here (and FXK and I had fretted over rain in the forecast for every day while there!!!). Back at the inn, we relaxed in and around the pool with some beverages before turning in - early as always!

As for the hat, it really did look better on Kim....