Hana

A long time ago I started talking about going camping to a couple of people at church. Finally we decided to stop talking about it and just do it. So last week we set a date and stuck to it. Originally my idea was to just have 4 or 5 people or so, but then work started to spread and the number quickly grew to 12 or 13 people. I guess I should have known that 12 committed people would turn out to be 7 people in total going. I really allowed myself to be freaked out for a while there.

5:30pm was the time we were supposed to all meet in Kahului and leave from there. Of course I went to go pick up this girl named Kiley and she wasn't packed at all. So I waited around for that to happen. We finally arrived at the meeting spot about an hour later than we should have - about 6:15 or so. As it turns out, another car that was going was in the exact same situation. Except they were running way later than even our car. After making a Wendy's run and they still weren't packed, we just left. As it turns out, about the same time we left they were finally ready to go and we met up just down the road. So we had a caravan of 3 cars.

I've heard that the drive to hana takes about 3 or 3.5 hours. Given our setting out time I thought we were really in trouble. Turns out the late start wasn't necessarity a bad thing. The way to drive to hana is to just ignore the yellow stripes on the roadway and use both lanes as one. This way you can go faster around the curves in the road and you don't get quite as motion sick as normal. At night we were really able to take advantage of that little tip because you could really tell when there was another car coming around the corner, and you could really cruise when there wasn't.

So we made it to hana in about 1.5 hours, but our campsite was about 10 miles down the road from there. So we drove some more, and we drove some more, then we kept driving. At one point we were driving through a little town, and a person in my car said they didn't remember it being before the national park, and I started to think that somehow we had passed a turn-off or something (despite there being only one road). Then came the kicker. We came to a bridge that said "Bridge May Collapse. Death or serious injury may result. No entry." Yeah. So we turned around and headed back, hoping that we'd run into somewhere we could camp. Driving past a house not far up the road there was a local lady opening her gate to get into her yard. We stopped and asked how close we were to Kipahulu. She then explained that we need to go over the DANGER bridge and keep on going. So we crossed our fingers and made it over the bridge safely. And soon after that we found our camping ground.

As we were settling into our camping spot and setting up the tent, Ben spotted a trail and we decided to follow it. Not far down the path there was a perfect clearing for setting up our tent, so we sprinted back and told the others. It was hard to get a good feeling for our surroundings in the dark. The moon was full so we did have some light, but we knew there would be one heck of a view in the morning from where our tent was.

In the morning we weren't disappointed. These first two pictures are of our view from the campsite. It was amazingly beautiful. (yeah, Kiley stepping into the picture as I was taking it.)

So early in the morning we hiked to the seven sacred pools. It was only about a half mile from camp. Here's a generic 7 sacred pools picture.

Next was a hike up the Pipiwai Trail. There were a couple of distinguishing features about the trail. First was the bamboo forest. I've been through a couple bamboo forests on other hikes here, but this was by far the coolest. The bamboo was at least 50 feet high. In fact the bamboo was so high and dense that we were in complete shade as we hiked. As the wind would flow through the tops of the shoots the bamboo would hit into each other and make this cool knocking noise. Then, of course, at the end was a 400 foot waterfall. I was under the impression that there was a pool for swimming at the bottom of the falls, but sadly, there wasn't. And I guess even if there was you would have to be crazy careful - while we were standing around a rock broke loose from above and came crashing down into the water. Scary.

Here's most of the crew (from left to right): me, Ben, Lyndee, Kiley, and Brady. Not pictured are Roxy and Roxy's friend.

A quick pic of the bamboo:

While on the hike we met some cool tourists. They recommended a side trail that led to the top of another waterfall. Because things had been so dry lately it was a dry waterfall at the time, but it was insalnely cool nonetheless. We threw a rock off the top to time how long you would have to live if you jumped off. Turns out it was about 5 seconds.

After the hike we headed back to camp for some lunch. The girls I guess were feeling lazy so the boys went for a drive to check out some of the other sights on that side of the island. Our first stop was Wai’anapanapa State Park. This is home of the only black sand beach on Maui. When we got there I immediately recognized it as the picture Bill Knight took when he was over here for a band trip. I can’t tell you how often I looked at that picture while on the mainland and dreamed of being on Maui. It was pretty exciting to finally see that place in real life. We swam a little off the beach and explored one of the lava tubes there, then headed out on the highway again.

After driving for a bit we came upon a sweet little beach (I think it was Hamoa beach?). Anyway, we hung out for quite a while over there and then went back to base camp.

Beyond that we just hung out and shot the breeze. This is another picture from our campsite and one of the sunrise early on Sunday morning. Overall it was a great trip, and one I hope to repeat often.