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This rather incomplete narrative of the trip is from
emails I sent home using a computer in
the motel office.
We stayed at the
Best Western Maui Oceanfront Inn, 2980 S Kihei Road
on the shore in Kehei. The room was small -
nothing much more than a bedroom with a small table
and a bathroom.
5/9/04
Yesterday we drove
"The Road to Hana", a trip around 1/2 of the island.
Probably less than 100 miles, but it took 12 hours,
at least 8 hours driving. It circles a mountain.
Lots of waterfalls and beautiful remote rocky coast.
But the road wound constantly and was very narrow in
places. There was about 7 miles of gravel road and
another 10 of rough payment. There was one tense
moment when going down a hill, I shifted into
reverse instead of to a lower gear, but fortunately
all it did is turn off the engine. Which is not good
when you have power steering, but I got it restarted
quickly. It nearly gave Carol a heart attack. The
far end of the island is not a good place to break
down with a rental car. At one point, we had to wait
for a big old bull to stagger out of our lane. Maui
is a big beef producer, and some of the cattle
ranches are on really remote parts of the island.
Nothing planned for
today. Maybe I'll do some snorkeling off the little
beach in back of the hotel.
5/10/04
Yesterday, Carol came down with a touch of diarrhea,
so we stayed close to home. I did some snorkeling in
back of our hotel, went again this morning. We've
postponed a snorkeling trip to a submerged crater
from Tuesday to Thursday. I've booked a guided
hiking trip
into the crater for Friday.
We've been here almost a week, and Carol has yet to
get in the water.
I booked another hike for tomorrow. This one goes
into the rain forest to find some waterfalls. Not as
long and strenuous as the crater hike Friday. That
also is a guided trip - costs about $140. But
otherwise I'd have to do it alone, which is probably
pretty dangerous.
It's sad when you have to rent people to play with.
5/11/04
Today I went on a
guided trip into the rainforest to see waterfalls
and such. The guide was a German woman who has lived
here for 20 years. She is part of a community of
conservationist who are trying to restore the
natural, native rainforest. Sounds like a losing
battle. Everybody who lives here seems to have
multiple jobs. Our guide said she teaches in
addition to working for the guide service. They are
at www.hikemaui.com. At that site, you can see
pictures of their various trips. Today I declined
the opportunity to jump off a waterfall into a pool,
but I did swim up to the waterfall in the pool. It
was a short trip, from 9:00 to 2:00, 2 hours getting
there in their van. They provided a sandwich for
lunch and lots of fruit - papaya, mandarin orange,
organically grown pineapple, mango, and dragon's eye
(or something like that).
The rainforest tour was short and leisurely and the
guide took a lot of time pointing out and naming
plants and providing background. She was a trained
naturalist, I think. Tomorrow's hike will be 8 miles
in the crater, and the pace will probably be faster
just because it is a long trek and less variety. We
will see. I just hope the trip doesn't get rained
out. We meet up at 8:00 and we are instructed to
call before we leave to make sure the trip is still
on.
Went to a luau tonight. I was too cautious. Didn't
eat and drink enough to get sick. I did enjoy the
local foods. The entertainment I didn't care about,
but Carol liked it.
5/13/04
This morning we took
a boat trip to the Molokini Crater, a submerged
crater off the coast here. I took a lot of pictures
of fish with my disposable underwater camera. Then
we went to another spot where we saw sea turtles.
Now we are back at the hotel and it is only 11:00.
Tonight is the luau and tomorrow is my hike in the
big crater (weather permitting). Carol tried, but
gave up on snorkeling. Instead, she used a boogie
board with a little glass window.
It is in the 80's
here most of the time and sometimes humid. We are on
the dry side of the island.
Yesterday we toured a
plantation that had a big variety of stuff, probably
for the benefit of the tourists. Star fruit, papaya,
mango, coconut, pineapple, macadamia nuts, and
others I don't remember.
I think the best thing about the island is the
beauty - the mountains and the ocean beaches. I
think we will spend much of the rest of our time
just riding around.
There are a bunch of
standard, popular "activities" here. The snorkeling
trip to Molokini crater and the sea turtles,
watching the sunrise at the top of the crater,
bicycling down the crater, driving to Hana (or
taking a tour bus). On just about every block there
is a shop that books any of these activities for
you. Kayaking - in the ocean, not rivers - is also
big here.
Carol was having
trouble with her stomach yesterday, so we took her
to the doctor. He gave her something for nausea and
she is better. He thought she might have a virus.
She goes back to the doctor Friday, while I am
hiking the crater. He's got her on a grilled cheese
diet.
5/15/04
Yesterday I took a
guided hike into the Haleakala Crater. There were
just 4 of us - the guide, who was a botanist, and a
young couple (late thirties?) from Florida. He is a
urologist. They were trying to get in shape for
another trip, scaling Mt. Rainier. And they said
that eventually they want to climb Mt. Everest. Then
again, they could just be trying to impress. They
seemed to have plenty of money.
There is a winding,
but smooth, 2-lane blacktop all the way to the top -
10,000 feet. We drove up there and took a few
pictures, then went back down to 6,000 feet to begin
the hike. We descended to the floor of the crater,
which is at 3,000 feet. It was a rocky trail,
forcing me to concentrate mostly on where I was
stepping. I've decided I'd rather hike uphill than
downhill. Later, someone said we took no longer
hiking up that we did hiking down.
We zig-zagged down
the crater wall and usually felt pretty safe,
although there were some pretty sharp dropoffs. The
vegetation was beautiful. There was a "tree fern"
that had red as well as green leaves and lots of
yellow primroses along the trail. At the bottom,
there was grass and lava outcroppings. It looked
nothing like it did from above. We hiked another
mile to one of about 5 cabins on the floor of the
crater that people rent. We went there only to use
the outhouse and eat lunch, which was muffins,
granola bars, and macadamia nuts because Roger, the
guide, had forgot to pack the turkey sandwiches.
A couple of chukkars
- similar to a grouse - hung around the cabin. There
were also pheasants - plain old ring neck pheasants
like we have at home - but they stayed away from us.
We could hear them crowing and we saw a few.
The ascent got me
panting a little, but the old guy (me) kept up
pretty well. I lagged behind some, but part of the
reason was that I was snapping pictures. I have 7
rolls of 24 so far. I didn't notice any extra
difficulty caused by the high altitude. We were
prepared for the cold, but I stripped down to a
T-shirt soon after we started. We didn't get rained
on, but much of the time we were in the clouds and
couldn't see more than 100 feet.
This morning, Carol
and I started to drive our rental up the mountain,
but the fog/rain turned us back. Later, we went to a
valley in the west mountains. (Maui is called the
"valley isle" because it has 2 sets of mountains
with a valley between.) But this was a different
valley, a valley within the west mountains [the Io
valley]. It has steep, high, heavy-vegetated walls
with a river running through it, but we got rained
out. And it looks like rain for the next 2 days.
5/20/04
We got back yesterday. It was a long day. Carol had
wanted to go to the top of Haleakela, the 10,000
foot mountain where I hiked down to the bottom of
the crater, but the weather kept us away. But the
forecast said it would possibly be clear Wednesday
morning, so we got up at 5:00, finished packing, ate
breakfast at the same place we'd had breakfast every
single other day, and headed up. It was clear. Carol
struggled with fear and stomach pains, but we made
it all the way to the top. She was pleased. She
didn't want to come home. But we got down, ate
lunch, and made our flight
at 2:00. |
