In order for us to make sunrise at the Haleakala crater, we had to wake up at 2:30 am. Luckily we had prepacked our breakfast and lunch, so we were off at 3:15 or so. Surprisingly enough, at 3 in the morning, there is no traffic on the roads. Whereas before we were going 30 miles an hour, this morning we were up at 60/65. Huge win for getting to the crater in time.
The last 10 miles or so is very windy as the switch backs of the road make their way up to the crater summit. We got to the summit which is around 10 thousand feet elevation at around 4:50 for a 5:39 sunrise. This was a perfect time because there were a lot of folks around. We moved to the edge and set up our tripod to make sure no chumps got in the way of our picture. There is nothing that ruins pictures more than other people. Did I mention it was cold? Cause it was fing freezing. It was 75 at sea level and 43 at the summit. The blue book had warned us that it was going to be cold so I brought all of my clothes. I was wearing a patagonia short sleeve, a patagonia long sleeve, a long sleeve button down and a north face fleece. I then had my hands in my shorts and another short sleeve shirt wrapped around my head as a hat. It was cold.
I have never seen something clear out faster than after the sun came up. There were a lot of bus trips that had everyone out a minute after the sunrise happened. Once it cleared out, we pushed our tripod back and took some pictures of us with the wireless remote. After taking a bunch more photos, we got back into the car, took off all our extra clothes and started the windy drive back to sea level. On the way down we had to dodge all these bike tours who were riding down in the lane and not on the shoulder. We had actually considered doing that but after talking to some people and reading the review in the blue book we decided not to pay for that ride. It isn't a tough bike at all; in fact you don't have to pedal at all. It is 100% downhill and not a real workout.
We finally got out of the park and headed up to take the road to Hana. Hana is a tiny town on the east side of Maui. In the future, whenever I hear that it is the journey not the destination that is the reward, I will think of Hana. The highway there is beautiful (and also super windy) and the town itself is a tiny little village with not much to speak of in terms of entertainment.
We were also armed with mp3s of a walk through of the hana highway. Unfortunately our rental car uses microsoft sync which as of iphone update 2.1, doesn't connect to the iphone even via usb. I hate you apple. So since we could only listen to it via the iphone built in speaker we decided to skip it. Anyone going to maui in the future can get these from me.
We reset our odometer at the start of the drive to match the maui book which lists everything by mile marker. The start of the drive is filled with a bunch of sucker stops that aren't that interesting and a lot of people waste their time on the early spots and rush through later. We stopped at mile 1 for a quick 20 minute nap. At this point it was a little after 8 am and we had been up for almost 6 hours. After we woke up, we continued past a few stops up until mile 10 where we went to the Garden of Eden. At mile marker 6 there is a hike to 4 waterfalls nearby, but we weren't up for it at this point. The Garden of Eden was one of the few places you have to pay admission. It was 10 a piece to see the gardens which have some animals wandering around and nice views of a cove and a waterfall. On the way out, there was a parrot showing which we stopped at. At first it seemed cool until the guy there informed us it would be 20 dollars for him to take a picture of us with OUR camera. We promptly left.
Soon after getting back on the road, we pulled off to see another waterfall. We had to jump a fence and take a sketchy trail down a ways, but it gave us a beautiful look back towards the falls.
Around mile 14, we stopped to get some banana bread. Apparently Hawaii loves the banana bread because there were shops all over for it. This place was recommended in the book so we stopped there. Heading back along, at the 17 mile mark, there is a small pullout and we walked down below the bridge to see Ching's Pond. You can apparently jump about 25 feet from around bridge level straight down into the water. You have a very small margin for error.
There were a couple other small stops we took along the way to see small waterfalls and other vistas. At around mile 24, we took the branch off to Nahiku Rd which was a one lane road meandering its way down to the coast. It was very green with vegetation overflowing onto the road. There were a few workers trimming back the trees and bushes on the side all the way down. Finally we hit a turnaround at the bottom and there was a "resident only" sign for the rest of the way. We parked our car and followed the road about a mile down to the coast. It was beautiful to see the rocky coast and the waves crashing up on the surf. It was definitely worth it to walk down. However I think you can actually drive it because there is a big parking area and turnaround at the bottom. It was drizzling a little so we didn't spend too much time there and walked back to our car.
We continued on to stop at the Kahanu Garden. However at that time it was pouring. We looked at the flier and it looked like a wide expanse of grass. There is a large temple there, but you can't climb on it and we decided to bag it and continue on the road. We drove on to the Wai'anapanapa black sand beach. It is formed from lava floes hitting the water and leaving fragments of sand. The sand wasn't very fine and was somewhat painful to walk on. We waded in to the water and were rewarded with some glimpses of sea turtles swimming by the cliffs on the left hand side of the beach. We walked back to our car and headed into Hana Bay where we stopped off the road by a beach with concrete tables. We pulled out or bamboo mats and took a nap for 20 minutes to kill time until our powered hang gliding flight at 4:30. We would have prefered to continue on the road but the county was doing construction on the Paihi bridge about 10 miles after Hana and had closed the bridge. After waking up, we drove back west to the Hana Airport.
We had gotten lucky to get reservations when we called yesterday for powered hang gliding because he had a packed schedule. We booked with Armin at Hang Gliding Maui We each had a half hour "lesson" because he can't charge for sight seeing tours. He first took Megan because she was more nervous about the flight. I took pictures with the little camera while he took her up. While she was up, I ran back to the car to get the big camera to take better pictures of her landing. I got some good pictures of her landing and then I gave the camera to her while I went up.
It was amazing! I have never been up in a small plane type thing. We went up as high as 4000 feet and had great views of the coastline of Maui as well as some of the valleys and waterfalls. I also got to steer the glider for a few minutes and then he took over and navigated us around. Armin is a great pilot and also fun to talk to the whole time. I can't recommend the flight enough. It was ridiculously outstanding. He also recommended a restaurant in Pa'ia for dinner.
We left around 5:30 and the traffic was almost all cleared up now. We knew the roads better and kept a much better pace this time and got to Pa'ia and stopped at Jacques, a seafood/sushi restaurant. I had the mahi with wasabi sauce and it was really good. After dinner, we drove back to our hotel where we passed out around 10 pm exhausted after a ridiculously long day.
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