Tiff & Jared's adventures

Maui has been amazing. We’re glad we did the Big Island, but we both feel like we don’t need to go back. We’d definitely both come back to Maui. We’ve seen rainforests, waterfalls, volcanos, wild chickens, great food trucks, fish with our snorkel gear, and more.

Friday

The first day in Maui was a bit hectic. If you pick up from the last blog, we flew into the island on a commuter plane and we certainly got our money’s worth for a $48 ticket. The ‘gate’ wasn’t at the typical terminal and there wasn’t a sniff of security as we walked right out onto the tarmac to the plane. 8 adults, a small child, a small dog, and a younger than normal pilot. That was the crew for a full commuter plane ride over to Maui. Jared wasn’t aware that he booked such an excursion, but we sure got our money’s worth for a $48 ticket. It felt as if we were getting on an amusement park ride and missed the memo about the chance to get off. Staying on the ride and getting an aerial vantage point of both of the islands was breathtaking. Vibrant blues and volcanic rock blacks passed by as we made are way to more vibrant blues and rocky reds and the island of Maui. A couple bumps here and there that were much more tangible on a commuter plane, but all in all a great experience with a smooth landing.

After getting our rental car from Turo (highly recommend this app) and checking into our hotel in Lahaina (Best Western right on Front Street), we got ready super quickly for our luau and walked down Front Street for our night of dancing and eating (and drinking 🙂 ) at the Feast at Lele. We were greeted with fresh leis and frozen cocktails, and had a great table in the first row. Before the dinner service started, we were able to walk down to the ocean and take some sunset pictures. The luau was really cool because unlike other buffet-style luaus with subpar food, this experience took us through food from for Polynesian areas (Hawaii, New Zealand!!, Samoa and Tahiti) and ended with dessert. To accompany each meal, there was dancing specific to that meal’s region. That means for New Zealand, we got to see the haka war dance! (I will say the New Zealand food was good but didn’t remind me of any of the regional cuisine we had during our two months there. It would have been more fitting to have seafood, lamb, or a savory pie). At the end of the luau they were saving the best for last – a fire dance! The dancer had a flaming baton of fire and danced perfectly with it. All in all, it was a really great night. The frozen pina coladas and mango mojitos made it even better 😉

Saturday

The next day was spent as a beach day mostly. First we woke up and visited Honolua Bay to snorkel, only after a quick and delightful açaí bowl from a food truck. We bought a single snorkel set off Amazon (wish we bought two), and we were amazed at how many people were already At the beach by ten to snorkel. It wasn’t a sandy beach – we found some seats on some boulders and took turns snorkeling in the bay. We each saw a bunch of different fish! My favorite was a catfish-looking one that had antenna-looking things near its mouth that it would use to look for food in the sand. After we got our snorkeling in, we drove up the coast, or the “back of the head” of the island. We stopped at Nakalele blowhole, careful to not get too close as people died from either being sucked into the hole or falling into the choppy ocean from the cliffs. It reminded me of the blowhole from the romcom with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey “Fool’s Gold”.

After this, we headed back towards Lahaina for some more yummy poke at the Fish Market before leading to another beach – Ho’okipa. It’s said that this is one of the best beaches to see sea turtles and those who said that were right! We arrived around four and there was a crowd gathered near the edge of the beach in front of a rock barrier. Behind the barrier were dozens of sea turtles. At first, we thought they were boulders! It was cool watching them float from the sea into the surf, then use the tide to propel them onto the beach. We headed back to town for another bowl of Hawaiian shaved ice, a healthy salad, and a quick trip to Whole Foods. Our lodging for the night was less than desirable after our original Airbnb cancelled a couple of weeks back and the pickings were less than slim. Was a place to lay the head and that’s about it but considering the wake up call was at 5:45, it did the job.

Sunday

Sunday was brutal. This was the day we drove the road to Hana, which is a famous road to the eastern town of, you guessed it, Hana.

Copied and pasted from a Hawaii travel website, “Along Maui’s rugged eastern coastline is the peaceful town of Hana, considered one of the last unspoiled Hawaiian frontiers. The legendary road to Hana is only 52 miles from Kahului; however, the drive can take anywhere from two to four hours to complete since it’s fraught with narrow one-lane bridges, hairpin turns and incredible island views. The Hana Highway (HI-360) has 620 curves and 59 bridges. The road leads you through flourishing rainforests, flowing waterfalls, plunging pools and dramatic seascapes“.

We woke up a bit early to hit the road because we read that with all the turns and twists, the road can get backed up with all the traffic. The beauty of the road is that there are so many pull offs to check out. We bit the bullet and bought an app for $10 that narrated the road for us, including the history of the Hawaiian Islands and what mile markers to stop off at. (We would highly recommend this app). The first stop we made was Honomanu Beach, a quarter-mile hike down to a black sand beach. I was a little cranky because of how early it was in the morning, and to top it off it started raining as soon as we got down to the beach, so I did not have the best first impression of the road 😂 However, it started to get better with each stop and more coffee. The next stop was the Ke’anae arboretum. This was a six acre botanical garden with some of the most unique and colorful botany we’d ever seen, including some rainbow eucalyptus trees.

We then stopped at a small coastal town called Keanae where we got some world-famous banana bread from Aunt Sandy’s. The town was struck with a devastating tsunami in the 40s and many locals perished in the tragic event; all that was left standing was the church made of lava rock and coral reef.

Continuing on the road, we made various other stops, including some fruit stands, Three Bear Falls, Koki Beach, Charles Lindbergh’s grave and Seven Sacred Falls. There are actually way more pools than seven at this spot but it was a marketing gimmick years ago to make the place sound super revered and sacred. The pools are part of Haleakala NP and unfortunately the pools were closed for swimming but they were beautiful. I’m glad we decided to stay the night in Hana rather than try and drive back after we finished all our stops – we were exhausted!

Since Hana is so small, there’s only three restaurants and a couple of food trucks. I was bummed we missed the chance to eat at a Huli Huli chicken stand (endorsed by Gordon Ramsey when he visited for his TV show Uncharted, it’s a grilled bbq chicken with a tangy sauce basted on it) so we settled for some fish tacos at a food truck then headed back to the Airbnb to go to bed around 8pm lol.

We got up early the next day as well to beat the traffic on the way out. By 10am, we were basically off the Road to Hana highway and heading towards Haleakala National Park. We weren’t fortunate enough to get reservations for sunrise (between 3am and 7am in the park you need a ticket if you want to watch the sunrise) so we opted to go in the late morning for the views.

The park is referred to as “House of the Sun” and for good reason. Towering over the island of Maui at over 10,000 feet, this place is ideal to see the island down below, usually with some clouds between the summit and sea. The landscape itself is also beautiful – it reminded us of Tongariro from New Zealand. That place was used to film Mount Doom for LOTR and we did the 19-kilometer hike through the barren landscape that felt like Mars. Haleakala was very similar – taking into the view from the summit, we saw within the crater Mars-like red deserts and mounds of red dirt. It was beautiful and felt as if we were on another planet. We also climbed to the “higher” summit where there are a bunch of telescopes used for governmental and commercial viewing. Apparently the largest telescope on earth was up there?

As the clouds rolled in, we headed down the mountain to make it to our 3pm distillery tasting tour at Haliimaile. Honestly this was probably the one activity we would recommend against after we did it – it was cool to understand the process of distilling but due to the licensing, they couldn’t serve cocktails and we did straight tastings of vodka and rum. I guess we’re not at the age where we can appreciate straight liquor yet!

And then, in true Jared and Tiffany fashion, we stopped at a laundromat for 1.5 hours because we finally had some free time and did not have many clean clothes. We are always efficient when we do chores though – I worked on the blog and we both wrote some postcards!

After laundry, we got some fish tacos to bring back to our Airbnb. The condo was a two minute walk from a beach park so we went and watched the sunset while we ate dinner. We then went to Maui Brewing and we were BLOWN AWAY by the sheer magnitude of the space. There was a huge outdoor patio with live music, the indoor seating was just as cool with huge industrial ceilings, and the beer was pretty good. The story about how the brewery came to be was awesome – some corporate financier quit his job in SF and started the empire of Maui brewing less than fifteen years ago.

The next morning was our last day in Maui. We had to wake up early to check in for our snorkeling trip to Molokini Crater! Molokini is a crescent-shaped and partially-submerged volcanic crater off the coast of the island of Maui. It’s crescent shape makes for the perfect protection from most wave activity – often giving divers a natural harbor to scuba, snuba, and snorkel. The crater houses a reef with over 250 species of fish with a visibility up to 150ft deep!

It was about an hour long cruise out to the crater, giving us beautiful early morning view of Haleakala and the Maui coastline. Most was italicized because we didn’t luck into great conditions. There was a southern swell coming up from Tahiti that made for much choppier water than normal. At least we got to still go – they canceled the trip the day before. We hopped in the slightly choppy water with our snorkel gear on and set out to discover all 250 different fish! The water was a little murky but we still got some beautiful views of the ocean floor and lots of colorful fish – no sea turtles sadly. After some cruising around at the top of the surface, we signed up for a snuba excursion! Snuba is a combination of both snorkeling and scuba diving – it offers an introductory attempt into diving underwater without having to wear all of the gear. We were outfitted with a weight belt to help keep us underwater, and we were given a breathing apparatus to hold in our mouth. We spent about twenty minutes underwater (maybe 10-15 feet) getting closer to the ocean floor and seeing a bunch of fish. It was definitely a fun experience and I’m glad we did it, but neither of us have a desire to take up scuba diving! After our snuba, we soaked up the sun on the boat and drank up some of the complimentary mai tais post-snorkel. We sat on the top deck which turned out to be the best spot because it wasn’t too crowded, and we met a nice family from California and a couple from South Carolina. On the way back to the marina, the crew lit up the grill and made us all burger lunches!

After a long, but beautiful, morning in the sun, we headed in a bit of a different direction. Iao Valley State Park is one of the wettest places on earth, getting an average of 400 inches of rain per year! Initially met with some sun, we sought refuge in the small river that flowed through the park. Once we lost our sun, we trudged up a couple hundred feet to the viewpoint for the Iao Needle. In Hawaiian culture, it is known as the phallic stone of the god of the ocean (Kanaloa.) We took some pictures and continued on our way for more activities before our evening flight. The family we met earlier on the boat tour raved about this distillery they went to called Ocean Vodka so we decided to go here for drinks and an early dinner. The drive to the place was off the beaten path but once we got there, it was beautifully manicured and had a gorgeous view of the valley below. From this elevated place, we could see the ocean on both sides of the island. We had some delicious tropical drinks and also delicious pizza and Cobb salad. Feeling satisfied, we finally made our way back to OGG for our flight to Kauai.