The Road Past Hana
All in all, Hana is a sleepy little small village.
The maps, the guide books, and all the car rental agencies recommend turning around at Hana and returning the same way you came. They tell you “Do not drive between these points. Driving on unauthorized roads violates car rental agreement.” . . . . so, what better reason than to proceed? To me, that is an invitation! We (meaning me) figured that after our excursion yesterday around the north part of West Maui, this could not be much worse. It came close, but I was right . . .it wasn’t worse!
The road past Hana is quite passable.
There was a section that was unpaved and was kind of well, . . .frightening, but we made it through!
Like the north end of the island, this area is quite rural with small farms and ranches,
some quite substantial looking homes and estates,
as well as some that were not much better than a cardboard box!
Just before Kaupo, we came to an old Catholic Church – St Joseph’s it was called. Perched on a hill overlooking the ocean, this church has an enviable “million dollar” view.
The church reminded me of the church in the John Wayne movie “Donovan’s Reef” complete with the wood shingled roof that was missing many shingles!
We wandered around the churchyard and accompanying graveyard and looked at the stone walls of a couple of buildings without roofs – whether the roofs have not been built, or they have been blown off, I could not tell, but the walls look like they have been there for many years.
Driving on down the road, it became rougher, unpaved, desolate and narrow in one place in particular in a bay where the cliffs rose straight up from the road that was barely wide enough for one car. We were debating on turning around because this seemed to be the worse we had encountered, and if it got worse, we could be in trouble. Coming from the other direction was a small SUV type vehicle, and as we pulled over as far as we could so they could pass, I motioned for them to stop.
“Hi there,” I said, “I was wondering how you got here.”
They looked at me kind of questioningly and I continued, “I was wondering if you came all the way through on this road or if you came from Hana and turned around up ahead.”
The guy driving still didn’t seem to know what I was referring to so I tried to explain, “We were debating on turning around and going back. The road seems to be getting worse, and we wondered about continuing on, We started out at Kihei and drove around the island and past Hana to get here, and wondred if we should go back the way we came.”
His wife who was sitting in the passenger seat leaned over towards me and said, “Oh, no. Definitely go on.”
The driver added, “The road gets better. This is the worse part right here..
He went on talking as I nodded, “We came from Napili, that’s where we live. “
“So,” I asked, “have you driven this road before?”
They both nodded and he said, “Oh, yes! Many times.” Looking at his wife for confirmation, he said/asked, “This is what? our tenth time?”
She replied, “Yeah, something like that.” I noticed a child in the back seat, maybe two or three years old.
I said, “I was hoping to see the Big Island from here, but so far, no luck.”
She replied, “Oh, we’ve never seen the Big Island from here.”
He explained, “Yeah, you can see Maui from the Big Island, but something to do with the clouds od whatever, you can’t see the Big Island from Maui. Except from on top of the mountain.”
I explained that we have a place on the south end of the Big Island, and when we were on the north end of the Big Island, north of Kona, we could see Maui quite clearly. I told them we were on Maui just for a vacation, checking it off the bucket list. They nodded.
She pointed out into the ocean and said, “Yeah, it’s right out there, but you can’t see it!”
“That’s disappointing” I said. They both shrugged their shoulders as if to say “So it goes!”
“Well, thanks, for the info” I said.
They said, “Have a good trip” as we drove away.
They were right. The road DID get better. Somewhere in this area it changed from Highway 360 (Hana Highway) to Highway 37 (Piilani Highway without us even noticing the difference. We must have missed the signs. But, it became well paved.
And then we came to a place where a bridge over a ravine simply wasn’t there. It had been washed out and they had filled in a short detour around where the bridge used to be.
The vegetation had changed from dense rainforest jungle to grasslands and ranches. There seems to be lots of open space here – at least lots of space for a small island. There were very few buildings along this stretch of road, and the openness and sparse population reminds me of the road from Cabo Pulmo to Cabo San Lucas in Baja Mexico, except the vegetation is much more green here than in Baja!
We drove around the corner of the island and there was Kahoolawe, sitting not too far off shore. A bit further on and we could also see Molokini atoll nestled surprisingly close to Maui and Lanai in the distance. We came upon a few more houses, still spread out from each other, and a few other buildings, even another church. We commented that if the St. Joseph’s church we passed back near Hana had a “million dollar view”, these ranches had a “billion dollar view”!
It had started to sprinkle, as the sun went down and continued as we drove along the Piilani Highway on the wayback to Kihei.
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 