Todos mis hijos

Today we decided to tackle Maui's famous "Road to Hana", which everyone said was a must see.

On our way to the Road to Hana we drove through lots of gorgeous rural Hawaii.

While driving, I started noticing that there was a green vine covering everything in sight. We saw it crawling up trees. We saw huge fields covered in indistinguishable green vine covered lumps.

I remembered reading once about an invasive vine in the deep south called Kudzu. I didn't know it was also found in Hawaii, but Google confirmed it. It was kind of neat looking and also scary, like if we didn't keep driving it would immediately start snakeing over our car.

Most of this area had low volcano rock walls running along the side of the roads. But the majority of the walls were covered with Kudzu. (See picture below...)

See the ocean way out there?

See the Kudzu climbing up this weed?

Can you see the arch behind us?

Most people drive the road to Hana starting from the West/North and heading East/South. We decided to go to opposite way to hopefully avoid a lot of traffic.

The Road to Hana is dangerous. With approximately 600 curves and 54 bridges, the Road to Hana can bring you closer to heaven in more ways than one. With winding roads, blind turns, constant traffic, distracting views, narrow one-lane roads, cliffs, and wet conditions, Hana Highway has proven its worth as a danger with many fatalities.

Lots of people talk about how scary this road is, but in my opinion, it had nothing on the highway we drove the day before.

Stick loved the condition of this guard rail and showed a picture of it to some of his UDOT buddies.

Safety is a top priority in Hawaii. Go ahead and try and drive off this cliff, this rusty guard rail will protect your aloha.

The Seven Sacred Pools.

We stopped for a picnic lunch in our car just when Aaron texted us that BYU had won their opening game. So we turned on ESPN.com and watched the highlights.

Then after lunch and a short sweaty walk with a little confusion as to where we were actually going, we found the trailhead to the Kaihalulu Red Sand Beach, which was not marked, so we got lucky. Basically, we walked to the edge of a grassy field next to a school, and there was a small trail going down the side of a cliff. We followed the trail down and around the cliff.

Now don't get me wrong, we saw a lot, a LOT of gorgeous beaches in Maui. But this one took the cake, it was unbelievable, and definitely my favorite.

I did not edit these pictures, the water was really that turquoise and the sand, that red.

This picture shows the little path down (and up) from the beach.

The sand was actually millions (billions? gazillions?) of tiny red and black rocks.

Kaihululu beach considered a pocket beach, 'cause it's pretty small.

There were other people there too, including a group of 20-something girls who were about half way down the beach from us.

We weren't really paying attention to anyone else, but I did notice the girls and think to myself that they were probably drunk due to their strange dancing moves on the beach.

Then all of a sudden Stick said, "Uh, those girls are all topless." And sure enough they had all taken off their bikini tops and were prancing down to frolic in the water. Topless. In all their glory.

It was precisely then that I remembered that I'd read that occasionally there was nudity at the Red Sand beach. The locals frowned upon it, but due to the seclusion of the beach, it sometimes happened.

Great.

The occasionally, and sometimes just happened to happen.

Right in front of us.

So we left.

Driving through the town of Hana, we spotted a pretty neat looking LDS church.

At this stop, we wanted to see another black sand beach, but it was closed due to high waves and hazardous surf. So we got a shave ice instead.

And man oh man, did we see some HUGE waves

Todos mis Hijos

Maui: Day 4

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