On an island in the sun.: Up West Maui and beyond

Last week, Justin and I headed up the west side of Maui. Ka'anapali is big, tourist city on that side of the island, and is home to multimillion dollar condos galore. There are supposed to be some pretty awesome beaches here, but we didn't stop. We wanted to keep heading up, because there are some pretty awesome sights beyond "civilization." Near the end of the road (where the arrow is pointing), the "world's best banana bread" can be found. I really enjoyed exploring this side of the island, though the drive at points made me incredibly nervous. (You'll see why when I get to the pictures!) :)

The first stop for us was supposed to be the Two-Tiered Tide Pools of Honolua. We never actually got there...lol. We pulled off the road, and followed what we thought was the correct path, but didn't actually end up anywhere near it. But I'm pretty sure we could see it from where we ended up. And the views were pretty anyways!

Justin peeing off a cliff. Because he thinks he's cool. :)

First trail we took attempting to find the two pools.

Pretty sure those are the pools. Not only were we far from them, but I think the high tides would've made them dangerous

View of the awesome coastline

Next on the agenda was the Acid War Zone hike that eventually leads to the Nakalele Blowhole. The Acid War Zone is a space along the coastline that has had slammed by billions of tons of sea water, and the salt has eroded away the rocks in ways that seem surreal. The guidebook named is the war zone, and comments on the fact that movies should be filmed here. It definitely seems like a scene out of Starship Troopers. :)

A mini blow hole on the way to the big one! :)

Close up on an "alien" rock

Justin checking out an acid rock

Once through the war zone, you come to the Nakalele Blowhole. I swear everytime I turned the camera off, a massive amount of water would come shooting through the hole. And when I would turn the camera back on, little baby poofs of water would come through. Haha.

After the blowhole, we hiked back to the car and continued on to the Olivine Pools. I've been wanting to see the pools since we got here. The guidebook compares them to Queen's Bath in Kauai, but says they were better. Unfortunately, I don't know if its because of it being early Spring or because the tides are crappy, but the pools weren't nearly as awesome as I had expected. I think we'll have to head back to them in the summer months and check them out in all their splendor. :)

The Olivine pools

Other folks checking out the further pools

Ash deposits from when island was young and volcanic--erosion reveals these splendors to us! :)

From the Olivine pools, we had to make the decision of making the trek back down through Ka'anapali and down into Lahaina. Or, we could make a dangerous, but much shorter trek and end up in Wailuku in 12 short smiles. I'm glad we ended up taking this route, even though the roads were terrifying! :)

The road was quite literally one car wide. There were spaces where you could pull off, but a little further up the road, there is no space, AND there is a giant cliff on the left hand side! :)

Narrow road doesn't even begin to cover it! :)


And of course! A frickin' school bus decides to come towards us while we're coming down! I held my breath the whole time it was passing us! haha. Though at least it was closest to the cliff! :)

Shortly after the school bus, we came to the little fishing town of Kahakuloa. See the map at the beginning of the entry to see where the village was located. Here, we purchased "The best banana bread in the world," as well as some kick ass coconut candy. Julia, the gal who owns the banana bread stand, sat in a little green stand at the end of the village road. The bread and the candy were awesome, though I don't know if the banana bread was worth the life threatening drive it took to get there! lol. I'm not really sure why I don't have any pictures of the village. Maybe I was still freaking out from the trip, or maybe I was in awe of how cute the little town was, and how secluded it was.

Julia's banana bread stand--you can purchase it online: http://www.juliasbananabread.com/id27.html

The rest of the drive wasn't nearly as treacherous, and we did stop at the Turnbull Studio and Sculpture garden, which was actually incredbibly cool. The sculptures were pretty awesome, both inside and outside the studio, and the main guy is obsessed with giraffes, so I took tons of pictures of them for my sissy! :)