Hana hou!

From Karin:

I've been excited to tell you all about our trip to Hana, but first, a quick language lesson about the word hana.  Hana means "work" in Hawaiian and ohana means "family".  I've got to think that the early language-creating Hawaiians had a bunch of small children when they made up those two words.  What I learned recently is that Hana hou means "do it again" or "repeat" or is used like we use "Encore!"  Back to this idea in a bit.

Hana is a very small town on the Eastern coast of Maui and getting there via The Road to Hana is the top rated activity in all of the guide books.  We had already driven halfway there with my parents, but knew we wanted to "do the loop" so we could see all of the sights along the way and then see the south shore of the island on the way back.  We decided that to really enjoy this trip, we needed to break up the driving and turn it into a 2 day trip.  Obviously, this necessitated an overnight stay in Hana.  It's interesting to go to a place where getting there is really the adventure and not much is said about the actual place.  So when we planned the trip to Hana, I was not sure how it would go.  In my mind, these were the things working against us:

1.  The trip to Hana and back via the south shore is about 100 miles and you can't ever really go more than 10-15 mph.  This translated to potentially 10 hours in the car with 2 small kiddos.  Hmmmm.

2.  The road is NEVER straight, there are countless hairpin (and blind!) turns, few guardrails, very old bridges and LOTS of scary drivers. I thought the chances of making this trip without someone getting carsick were slim.

3.  All of the sights we wanted to see involved some sort of hiking, climbing, energy and tenacity that we thought might be difficult for Davis.  Would he have a meltdown at the bottom of some rocky gulch?  Carrying Carter out of a situation like this is one thing, but Davis?  Not possible. 

4.  We had reservations to stay at the Aloha Cottages in Hana which was reviewed online as "kind of a dive, but adequate."  Hard to get excited about staying in a place like that, but at only $100 a night (cheap for Hana), we decided to go with it. 

5.  We knew that when we got there, we'd be eating at the only family restaurant in Hana.  The guide book had something like this to say about it:  "Arguably the worst restaurant on the entire island, but they've been working hard to make some improvements."  Again, hard to get amped up for that.

Back to our language lesson.  Now that the trip is over, I really only have one thing to say:  Hana hou!   

Here's how my 5 concerns from above turned out.

1.  Splitting the trip into 2 days was a brilliant move.  We never spent more than 1 hour at a a time in the car, the boys were great and we had plenty of time to really see and do the things we wanted to along the way.  We never felt like we needed to "push" to get to the next thing.  

2.  Under tough circumstances, Peter is a fantastic chauffeur.  He stops whenever I see a photo op, Davis has to pee or Carter needs to eat.  He handles the turns, the pull offs, the one lane sections of road, the other drivers and (basically) stifles his desire to see all of the spectacular views while driving.  Bottom line, no barf bags needed...yippee!!

3.  Davis is developing into quite an adventurous explorer!  He saw and did everything we had hoped for, climbed through a pitch black cave, boulder hopped his way up a stream, climbed down to the bottom of a gulch, swam in a freshwater cave and "whooped" with excitement when we spotted the first waterfall.  He has been a wonderful travelling companion, 

FILLED with questions about all that we do and is genuinely excited and interested to be along for the ride, wherever it takes us.  

4.  Our unit at the Aloha Cottages was a pleasant surprise.  A bit dated, yes, but clean, comfortable and it had a view of Hana Bay.

5.  The Ranch Restaurant was also better than expected.  Sadly, Davis was underwhelmed with his fresh mahi-mahi fish sticks, but Peter and I enjoyed our meal, Davis got to watch baseball and there was good live music.  All in all, not a bad night.

Some pictures from Day 1

Stop #1: Back to the Ke'anae Peninsula to check out the surf.  This time, we stopped at Aunty Sandy's and had the best banana bread we've had so far.  We've worked hard to sample and critique this island staple.  Photo from Stop #2:  Davis and Peter climbed down to see Ching's Pond, a place known locally for great swimming and daring cliff diving.

 

Stop #3:  The bottom of Nahiku Road for our picnic lunch.  Beautiful, sweeping views of the shoreline, lava outcroppings in the water and a pod of dolphins. 

Stop #4:  Kahanu Garden, part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.  We took a long walk around the grounds to see the ancient heiau and native plants and trees. We were chatting with some of the grounds crew and they offered to cut us a fresh coconut.  Fresh from the tree, the water inside is clear and slightly sweet.

Stop #5:  A quick, photo op stop for me.  I've been hoping to see/photograph a painted bark eucalyptus tree.  Mission accomplished.

Stop #6:  Almost to Hana.  This is the black sand beach at Wai'anapanapa Park.  (Easier than it looks:  Why-ah-nah-pah-nah-pah).  We did some exploring, but it was too rough right at the shoreline to swim.

Instead, Peter and Davis hiked to this freshwater cave and went swimming.  Davis later took me back to show it to me so I could get a picture.  Life with 2 little kids can make it hard to do things like this as a family of four.   We often split up, then swap kids and Davis acts as the tour guide for the parent who missed it the first time.

Final stop:  Our cottage.  We had the whole upstairs.  It had a tin roof so the TORRENTIAL rain we got overnight made for lots of noise (and some amazing waterfalls the next day!)

Some pictures from Day 2

Peter got up early and hiked to find the Red Sand Beach.  Oddly, this is on one side of a small peninsula in Hana Bay and the beach on the other side of the peninsula is black.  Not sure how this happens, geologically speaking.

Stop #1:  Koki Beach with a great view of coconut tree-topped 'Alua Island.  When we left here we also got to see Hamoa Beach.

Stop #2:  Wailua Falls.  Just gorgeous in the morning sunlight after a good rain. 

Stop #3:  The south portion of Haleakala National Park to see 'Ohe'o Gulch.  This is a banyan tree at the beginning of the hike down the gulch to see the Seven Sacred Pools.

These are the falls and pools of 'Ohe'o Gulch.  Because of all the rain, it was really flowing, was filled with dirt and was closed for swimming.  Since it's part of the National Park, they can do that, bummer.  It's particularly neat because it flows right down to the ocean.  (Yes, I just used the word neat.)

Stop #4:  The highlight of the trip...hiking to Alelele Falls.  Boulder hopping up a stream to get to this was totally worth it.  The water was pounding over the falls, we had the whole thing to ourselves and Peter went swimming under the falls.  We have some great video from this adventure!

Photo op stop:  Looking back at Kukui'ula Falls, unusual because it plunges directly into the ocean.

Stop #5:  A church in the village of Mokulau (means "many islets").  Stop 6 (not photographed) was a snack stop for an organic Kona coffee smoothie made in a grass hut by a bicycle powered blender.  Only in Maui....

Stop #7:  A quick stop to see the Pokowai Sea Arch.  By this time, we were driving along the barren southern shore.  To the left of the road is new land (bare, rough black lava) created by the most recent lava eruption of Haleakala in 1790 and to the right is dry desert.  So odd after driving through rain forest earlier in the day.  We finished the drive back to Haiku through upcountry and were home by 5:30.  What an adventure!