**Wowie Maui** Road to Hana

The Road to Hana. This was an all day road-trip for us. It's approximately 60 miles to Hana from the airport. A twisting, turning, winding, narrow, coastal road with over 600 curves and 50 bridges to cross. It takes about 2.5 - 3 hours to drive there. The entire time you are driving through rainforest/jungle. The scenery is beautiful. There are waterfalls.....flowers.....the ocean....its breathtaking!

The only downside to the day was all the rain. And not just a sprinkling. We had torrential downpours at times. Most of our drive to Hana looked like this...

There were times when the rain stopped along the way. Thankfully. One of those times was at the Garden of Eden. A beautifully upkept private park. According to the brochure we were given,  part of Jurassic Park was filmed here. The only thing we found slightly ironic about it though was the fact that there were all these buddha and various goddess statues strategically placed throughout the grounds. We could have done without those...especially in the Garden of Eden of all places!

Isn't the painted eucalyptus tree below beautiful? My boys referred to them as "camo" trees. They reminded me of a vintage paint-by-number painting... 

There was a silver lining with all the rain that day. The waterfalls. Usually, they are just slowly trickling down the mountain sides and along the road. You have to keep a sharp eye out for them as you are driving along. But as we discovered, if you go on a rainy day, that is not a problem. They were just roaring, pouring, gushing, rushing down the mountains. We saw some stunning, breath-taking waterfalls as we drove along... 

Because of all the rain, we didn't stop and try to do any of recommended hikes along the way. One place we did make a little detour for was the Hana Lava Tube. Fantastic! We highly recommend it for something interesting and different to experience. We were each given a flashlight and away we went...down into the lava tube to explore...

I was a slightly hesitant about it... my claustrophobic tendancies and all. But the lady assured me that I wouldn't find it a problem so I joined my boys and away we went...

Goodbye natural light...

It was almost impossible to take pictures. Excuse the bad quality. They do give you an idea though of what it was like. At one point, Keith convinced us all to turn off our lights. It was pitch black. I had my hand in front of my face touching my nose and couldn't see it at all. Talk about pitch-black darkness.

This area was kind of neat. The stalactites (I think that's what they were called) on the ceiling resembled chocolate Hershey's kisses...

Here's a closeup shot...you couldn't help but reach out and touch them!

Heading back up to sunlight again. Whew, I did it!

Around lunchtime, we reached the Wainapanapa State Park. We had planned to eat our picnic lunch here. Unfortunately it was really windy and rainy, so we just ended up picnicing in our car. The Honokalani Black Sand Beach is located in this park. And this particular black sand beach has a story to tell. See how gray and overcast the sky was while we were there? Notice the water? It was insanely wild. Crashing and bashing!

You know how some stories just stick in your mind and the memories never fade? This is one of them.

Ten years ago, Keith and I had stopped by this same beautiful beach. The surf was strong and pounded the shore that day as well. BUT. The sky was bright blue, the sun was shining and it was a gorgeous hot day. Keith and I enjoyed a lovely picnic lunch. It was all quite romantic until my brand-new hubby decided he needed to go for a swim. Right there in that wildly pounding surf. I'm sure I had a conniption. I'm sure I was envisioning becoming a widow 1 week into my marriage. I'm sure I flat-out said that "he can't go". And I'm sure we had a bit of an argument about it. As it turned out, my adventurous husband did go swimming in that surf. The entire time he was in there, I refused to watch him. I was TERRIFIED. Eventually he had enough and came out. All pleased as punch about it. I was just glad that he was still alive. As he stood there towelling off he said to me "I gave you the car keys right?". And it was absolute silence (except for the pounding surf) between us as I shook my head no and we both looked down at his swimsuit which had BOTH pockets turned inside out...

Oh yeah. We were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. Hours and hours away from the car rental place. And our only set of car keys was somewhere out there in the ocean.

I immediately started breathing silent prayers. Keith immediately turned around and silently headed back to the beach. He walked to the edge of the water, bent down and picked up something silver. The car keys. They had washed up on shore. What are the chances of that? Luck? I think not! My goodness. Big prayers of thankfulness!

We have never forgotten that little incident.

Here we are on our honeymoon...

And here we are 10 years later at the same spot...

Notice my hubby wistfully eyeing that water...

Psssst! I'm going to be honest here and say that I was actually pretty glad that it was raining and rather nasty while we were at this beach, this time around. Why? Well, you will notice that Keith deliberately wore his swim trunks on our road trip. He had BIG and FULL intentions of swimming in this spot again.  Ten years later, I still wouldn't have been able to watch him. It was out of the question this time around, the water was just too wild and turbulent for him to even consider it. Big deep silent sighs of relief. ;-)

Instead of turning around in Hana and driving back the same way we came, we decided to take the back roads and do a loop around the island. Not sure if you're really supposed to do these roads with a rental car...but my adventurous hubby was all game for it. We drove the second half of our trip on single land roads (that was meant for both directions) and had to do cute little things like "blow your horn" (just like the sign says below) when you went around a corner, to warn cars approaching in the opposite direction.

At one point in the day, Keith looked over at me and sweetly said "I'm so proud of you honey!" I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me that I'm not at all anxious and nervous about driving on these roads like I was 10 years ago. I hadn't really given it much thought. Obviously over time I've mellowed. Keith's adventurous streak must be rubbing off on me slightly!

My most favourite discovery of the day was this old abandoned Hawaiian church (St. Joseph's) that we happened upon. We stopped and wandered the grounds. You can't tell from this photo, but it's sitting on cliffs, overlooking the ocean. I could have stayed here all day, taking pictures. So pretty and peaceful...

There's a reason why they have them on their license plates - Rainbows are everywhere on Maui...