When I came home from my LDS mission to Russia, there were a lot of things that had changed in my parents’ house over the course of two years. We now had a big flat screen TV, some different furniture, the living room had been painted a different color, and so on. It took a while to get used to. As I was looking around at all the changes, I noticed something else new.
“What’s with all these pictures of you guys surrounded by lush, green plants?” I asked.
“Oh, those are from our Hawai’i trip, of course,” came the reply.
“Hawai’i trip!? What Hawai’i trip?“
“Oh, right. We didn’t tell you yet, did we?”
See, apparently in the midst of writing emails to me as a family every week for two years, my family somehow left out the part where they went to Hawai’i for a week while I was chilling (or freezing, rather) in St. Petersburg, Russia. To be more precise, they decided not to tell me because they felt either too guilty or too concerned about what I might do if I found out my family was vacationing in a tropical paradise without me.
I think the most shocking part was just that they managed to keep something like that a secret from me for almost two years. I didn’t have a clue.
Anyways, fortunately for me, my parents were sufficiently guilted by this experience that they promised they’d make it up to me sometime. Which is (at least partially) why I now find myself with my family in Maui when I should be attending my summer classes.
This morning we woke up at 6:30am (not as bad as it sounds, considering the four-hour time difference – it actually felt like 10:30am) to drive along the road to Hana. There’s really not much in Hana, it’s the road itself that’s a huge tourist attraction. How’s that for a life metaphor?
It really was pretty sweet, though. It’s a really winding road that hugs the mountain along the coastline, with little turnoffs all over where you can pull over, hop out, and check out the waterfalls and other sights along the way. It’s really narrow – in a lot of places, the whole road is only one lane wide and you have to take turns with oncoming traffic to get through. The scenery is so lush that we actually passed the Garden of Eden:
There were countless waterfalls along the way. One of the ones we stopped for was particularly huge. My dad and I got adventurous and decided to try to climb over to it, which our guidebook assured us would not be that hard once we got past the “first step or two”. I neglected to take a picture of it, but the first thirty steps or so were essentially a vertical climb down a miniature waterfall. When we got to the bottom we were quite pleased with ourselves, but an expanse of large boulders and rocks still stood between us and the view we wanted, and we were both only wearing sandals.
The fact that we survived the trek down that first stretch gave us enough of a sense of accomplishment that we decided to turn back instead of pressing on, so we climbed back up to the road just in time to greet a surprise rain shower. It was a weird rain – instead of big, heavy raindrops, there were just tons of tiny ones. Kind of like walking through a really heavy mist.
Next up was a short cave (actually an old hollow lava tube). It was a lot of fun to climb through, although we almost turned back prematurely when we hit what appeared to be a dead end. Our perseverance was rewarded by an awesome scene, somewhat reminiscent of the new Pirates movie:
A short drive from there was an awesome little area that was pretty much exactly what you picture when you think “tropical island.” We ate lunch there, which was delicious, and watched waves crash against the rocks. I don’t know how anyone who lives in Hawai’i manages to get anything done with views like this nearby:
In the end, we never even drove all the way to Hana. Just short of town there was a big black sand beach (the sand is made of volcanic rock). I haven’t been to a beach in forever, so I spent a lot of time just letting the waves wash up to my feet. As we were leaving, we noticed a little cave off to the side, which led back to the water:
This cave didn’t have any sand, just big black pebbles. Being my usual clueless self, I ran out to where the water was washing in to try and get all the black sand off my feet and sandals. It worked pretty well, until I heard a loud WHUMP! to my right as an abnormally big wave smashed against the cliff wall.
Oops.
I had apparently gone a bit further out than I should have, and was rewarded with a nice saltwater shower (I was wearing street clothes). I also got a friendly reminder of what the ocean tastes like. Fortunately my phone survived the ordeal, so I was able to torture you all with these pictures!
All in all it was an awesome little excursion. If you actually read all of this, I hope you haven’t already disowned me as a friend for not bringing you along.
I probably wouldn’t blame you, though.
