The Road to Hāna 2
The following is continued from last week. Unlike last week, however, this is not a poor attempt at a very poor man's travel guide.
Well, poor in that the man is too cheap to go out and buy a book on the Road to Hāna, but one that can, presumably, afford internet access and either has a commendable memory or has access to a very cheap printer. We realize now that that's just not our strength, you know, describing stuff with any degree of accuracy that you might be able to base future trips to an island on those aforementioned descriptions. So we decided to stick with what we were good at, nay, what we loved to do. In the hopes that that love would shine through to you, Dear Reader, and all that malarkey.
Thus, and without further ado, we bring The Road to Hāna. Again.
We awoke at the crack of dawn.
By crack of dawn, of course, I mean around 10 o'clock in the morning.
When you're on holiday and sloughing west through the time zones you can take advantage of that jet lag to call mid-to-late morning the crack of dawn in all seriousness, even if crack of dawn back from where you're from passed by hours and hours ago. "It's the jet lag," you can say, "I'm all discombobulated."
Most guidebooks will tell you to head off on the Road to Hāna quite early in the morning. In fact, most of the things in the guide book on Maui are to be done in the early morning hours. From the sunrise at Haleakala to snorkeling around South Maui and Molokini to hiking the trails out of the midday sun, the vast majority of activities are best completed, say the guides, by midday or so. The guide books also tell you that Maui is home to the occasional black widow spider.
So we weren't off to the best start, according to the guide books.
Outside of Pā'ia, the last town to speak of on the Road to Hāna before the eponymous town, we were locked and loaded with a cooler full of sandwiches, Gatorade, water, full tank of gas in the car, some trail mix packages in the front seat, sunglasses on and ready. The driver's seat was adjusted just so I could lean back, arm on the windowsill, fingers resting against the top of the window, thumb and pink finger extended, like I was already giving the shaka to sign to other drivers who were most certainly not trained on the manic streets of Massachusetts or the suicidal streets of California. Everything was cool.
My guide on the trip, a lovely girl from Clare, told me, "Take it slow. This road is winding." I started to sing "The Long and Winding Road," which didn't go down well. Actually, I didn't sing it out loud. I just sort of hummed it in my head. And, after having hummed it there, I figured it was best left in my head, because it wouldn't go down well. She was also staring at my lips, which I'd apparently been moving while I was humming "The Long and Winding Road" in my head, because she said, "Why are your lips moving? Are you singing 'The Long and Winding Road'?" I was, too, those exact words only, because I couldn't remember how any more of the words went past "the long and winding road, dum dah... hmm hmm." I denied it, of course, and pretended I was just chewing on my bottom lip.
Which I had to start doing, of course, if only to prove that I occasionally chewed on my lower lip just as a general habit.
Around mile three of the newly reset mile markers, I nearly bit through my lip when we hit the first of the major bends in the Road to Hāna.
Now, I've driven on winding roads before. I've driven around the back roads of Clare, which are very curvy even for the locals. I've driven on Highway 1 along the coast in California, home to some some pretty impressive bends of its own, and more impressive turns needed to avoid other drivers. And in Maui, it's like the convicts who were tasked with building the roads said, "Man, how the hell are we going to stay out as long as possible, building a road on a little island like Maui? Oh, oh, I know! Let's make this the winding-est road ever!" And there was much cheering and rejoicing from the convicts who were building the road, at least until the first one of them got bitten by a black widow, at which point they said, "Forget it, let's just get this stuff done with."
Based on that scenario, I'm guessing they started at Hāna and worked their way west. I'm only guessing because we didn't quite make it as far as Hāna, so as far as I know after mile thirty seven it gets eye-wideningly straight and everyone zips along at 55 miles per hour. I don't know.
The bends are the sort that, even though the roads are sign-posted at 10-15 miles per hour, they still catch you by surprise. Each turn seemed to conspire against us and our big Monte Carlo, a car that took corners like a 747 coming in to land on a donut. This was aided in small part by the one lane bridges with yield signs preceding virtually every one of them along the route. And, according to the guide book and a healthy dose of perceived bridge-ness, there are close to four thousand bridges along the journey.
And almost every bridge, again according to the guide book, promises limpid pools and verdant streams rushing sea-ward, which you and your traveling companions may frolic in at your leisure. Just a little bit off the beaten path, in most cases, be sure to bring your hiking boots. And watch out for black widow spiders. All right, that last bit wasn't in the guides. I simply inferred the warning as a result of reading, on one of the pages, that black widow spiders were a potential hazard on the island of Maui.
Well, after the near lip-biting incident at the first bridge and the queasiness of the guide from Clare at the roads turny-ness, we decided we were well able to try and find a few of these pools and risk the venom of the black widow spider in return for not feeling nearly so car sick.
And we'll tell you about all these and more, possibly... next week.... ?
Summary
disclaimer:
We hope you enjoyed our travelogue, this time with real travelogue style, instead of the halting guide book style of the aforementioned previous week.
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