Friday: The Road to Hana

There are two days of honeymoon pictures left to share. Friday was the day we drove the Road to Hana. The road to Hana is two lanes, comprised of many one-lane bridges, hairpin turns, steep Cliffside drops and 600 turns. I’d been warned by many about the steer-wheel gripping fear that is the road to Hana, but didn’t really have any anxiety at all. Maybe it was growing up in northern California, making twisty drives to places like Stinson Beach and Yosemite that prepared me for this drive.

Aside from it’s infamous legacy as one of the more frightening roads in America, the road to Hana is beautiful. The greenest part of Maui, the road to Hana is also laced with waterfalls and picturesque views. After stopping for a lunch of hotdogs at Halfway to Hana, we continued on the road.

One of our more impressive side tours was the road to Nahiku. Touted in the guidebook as being the greenest part of the Road to Hana (plant-heaven, I believe they described it as), it was certainly impressive. The trees grew high over head, nearly surrounding us in a tunnel of green. At the end of the road is a beautiful view of the entire Hana coastline that we had just driven past.
As we neared Hana, we stopped to visit the lava tubes. Lava tubes are created when lava from volcanic vents forms a river that crusts over on top, and are capable of transporting lava over 20 miles. Luckily, these lava tubes are long extinct, and armed with flashlights, we journeyed in to the dark. Underground as far as we were, there was no natural light at all, but we used flashlight to see the various textures and geologic patterns created by the lava that originally flowed through the tubes.
Back in the car, we had one last stop to make, at the famous black sand beach at Wai’anapanapa State Park. Very much not a swimming beach (reinforced by the copious numbers of signs posted by the Hawaiian government), it was a beautiful study in color, with the black of the sand (really small pebbles of lava rock) contrasting with the green of the plants and the blue of the ocean. I’ve never seen anything like it before.