The road to Hana

It's interesting that this excursion for everyone is described as "the road to . . ." That's because once you get there, there is not much to see, but the road, oh the road.

It's 50 miles of twisting turning roads and one lane bridges with a spectacular view all along the way. The other thing about the "road to" is the stop that you take along the way. I'll highlight a few.

We'd heard about this first one from our zipline guide and in our guide book. 6.5 miles in we started down a trail into DENSE bamboo forest. Turns out this first trail was the wrong one. We came back up to road a few minutes later. It should have been a clue that my wide shoulder would only go sideways down the trail. Bamboo makes this incredible sound as the wind blows through it. It's like an entire orchestra of wood blocks. We did find the right trail and followed through the bamboo (wider this time) to our first couple of waterfalls. We had to crawl up a couple of rock faces, but stop short on the 12 foot rope climb to get to the next waterfall.

Our guidebook garunteed us a private waterfall if we pulled off at this unmarked stop and boulder-hopped up the stream for about 20 minutes. Well 20 minutes was a little more like 40, but we did get there and it was magnificent. We both took a couple of falls out of the deal and ended up muddy and bruised.

After overnighting outside of the town of Hana (and invading a family reunion going on below us) we headed out to the National Park. Now this is the same national Park that we were in while we were in the Crater, but on the otherside of the Volcano. This is the windward side, so instead of desolate and barren rock-scape we were in dense rain forest. We swam a little but in the bottom two of the 7 Sacred pools. (I think the kids peeing in them make them holy) and then headed up the volcano to Waikmu falls. This would be our last fall of the trip, and it was amazing. Water plumets 200 feet bouncing and churning and misting all the way down. The 4 miles round trip was well worth the time we got to spend beside this fall. The hike itself went through more bamboo forest, under a giant Banyon tree. All around us Mango and Guava had fallen and were bein consumed by hoards of fruit flys. They put this sweet smell in the air that makes me want a smoothie now that we're back down.

Alright. Only twenty minutes until we need to be at the airport. More pictures and stories after we hit the mainland.

Aloha!