Favorite Stops of the Road to Hana
After a very very long hiatus, I'm so excited to share another travel trip on Shortcut Travels. I recently got married in Maui, and my new hubby and I had the awesome opportunity to drive to Hana and see what all the fuss was all about! :)
Typically, people who go on the road to Hana plan out certain spots they want to check out. But because we had friends coming with us who were heading out to the airport in the mid-afternoon, we decided to go to the very farthest point first, which seemed to us the best thing - the Seven "Sacred" Pools and the Pipiwai trail to the Waimoku Falls.
The drive definitely had a lot of twists and turns and it was so fun! C loved it - until we started to see more cars, and nothing is more frustrating having to follow cars through winding one-lane roads. I, on the other hand, maximized the slower speeds to take more photos of beautiful rainforest, and the trees! I recently started a calligraphy business, Written Word Calligraphy and Design, so observing these trees that we clearly don't have in Vancouver has been so inspiring!
Check out that beautiful tropical vine with large leaves. I was in love!
And the trees that just act like a canopy and touch through the roads... I was in tree heaven! This part of Maui was more rainy, so I felt that we went through multiple weather changes within a couple of kilometers!
Finally we arrived! Since we saw that the Pipiwai Trail to the Waimoku Falls was going to take longer, we did that first! It takes about 2 hours to do it, and especially since I was taking a bazillion photos it took us closer to 3 hours.
Loved this majestic Banyan tree that you'll see close to the start of the trail. They're everywhere in Maui, or in Hawaii in general, and I find them so amazing!
Saw a lot of smaller waterfalls along the way, too. Took a whole bunch of photos since I couldn't stop longer to paint them. But the greenery in this area was just so lush and amazing!
Perhaps my favourite area in this entire trail was the bamboo forest. I had never seen a bamboo forest in my life, and it was just breathtaking. Hawaii has a very unique ecosystem, with a lot of the trees and flowers brought in either by birds, other animals or people. I'm not sure who decided to create this area - but it's such a beautiful and memorable place, C thought I would never leave.
When the breeze would pass by, the bamboo would hit each other creating this beautiful, organic music. I felt it was like their way of worshipping the God that created them.
The trail was so fun because it brought us through many different terrain and scenery. I've never seen this many things on a single trail!
Then at the end of the trail, you'll reach the Waimoku Falls, a giant waterfall that has a drop of about 400 feet. Pretty amazing, and so much power!
Then I got distracted by the variety of foliage that grew around the falls. So. freaking. beautiful.
Then we headed to the Oheo Gulch, also known as the Seven Sacred Pools. Apparently there's nothing really sacred about them, just that it was lost in translation sometime!
It was just crazy seeing the freshwater hit the sea!
The fauna in Hawaii is interesting - since most of them are not native, they're brought in, or the animals flew by and decided to stay and make their habitat here, a lot of them don't have their natural predators. For example, they don't have lions or bears. Spiders and a lot of the insects were brought in by birds.
At this time we were absolutely hungry. We had heard of this awesome barbeque place called Braddah's Hutt BBQ Grill, so we went to look for it. Best decision ever. The only thing we wish was that we had headed out there earlier, because a lot of the food was gone, so the menu only had a couple of things available. Hungry + amazing food = happy us.
There was chicken, and pork, and pork ribs. Yum yum yum! The food came freshly cooked from the grill, topped with delicious mac and cheese sides.
We headed back north and stopped by the Wainapanapa State Wayside Park. There were a lot of people there just to swim and hangout, so we didn't stay too long but took a good number of photos. It's just crazy seeing all these interesting rock formation because of the waves, causing erosion. So there's some that are ultra smooth, and some are just slowly weathering away.
And I would say these are my favourite stops of the Road to Hana. A lot of the other places didn't really have a good parking area, so they were hard to get to. The traffic is really tough because you would have to share the road with the cars going the other direction. But it's such a beautiful place, you've just got to go even once! :)
Love, K