The Road to Hana

So here’s my final Maui post. It seems like Maui was two years ago, instead of two weeks. Life comes at you fast with little kids!

The Road to Hana is a day trip highly recommended in Maui (called one of the most scenic roads in the world). It is a curvy coastal road, 69 miles long, that takes 3 to 4 hours to drive (one-way), depending on how many waterfalls you stop to look at (and how many tourists you have to fight through). The road also leads to the black sand and red sand beaches that are blogged about here.

We’re always up for an adventure, and I ADORE waterfalls so the road to Hana was perfect for us! The waterfalls vary depending on rainfall; it was raining the day we drove through, so all of the waterfalls were FULL.

The entire drive is covered by tropical foliage like this:

The pathway on our first hike

Na’ili’ili-haele Falls

  Lower Puohokamoa Falls

Yep, that’s the road we’ve been driving!

I love this picture because it shows how many waterfalls are scattered throughout the area—I can only imagine how many we DIDN’T see!

Lower Waikani Falls (I think my favorite waterfall picture!)

Many of the falls would be under the bridges that you would drive over! We stopped at the black sand beach with another thousand tourists. Oh, well, it was awesome all the same.

Taken from the cliff side hike to the red sand beach. Isn’t the water color amazing!? Look at the upper left hand top of the cliffs. Yep, that’s a guy diving! The coastline was so beautiful! (‘Alau Island in the background)

We stopped at a roadside stand outside of Hana to sample some fresh Hawaiian fruit. Passion fruit was my favorite! I wish I would have taken pictures :( After all those falls (I haven’t even shown you half the pictures of the falls we saw, and we didn’t stop at all the falls) there were still more waterfalls to see.  Wailua Falls ‘Ohe’o Gulch. Sometimes you can swim in these pools, but the water was POURING down of them because of the rainsMore of the ‘Oheo’O Gulch (aka Seven Sacred Pools)

Now marks the spot where most people turn around and drive back the way they came. But what would an adventure be without a sketchy gravel road to drive on? So we continued on…and stopped to hike what ended up being our favorite waterfall. We were the ONLY people at this falls, and had to cross the stream to get to it. It was a wonderful experience! It’s hidden in the back left…this is just a taste of the hike Alelele Falls A forest on the way back…awesome! The “backside” of the road to Hana; much different than the lush drive we started the day with! And a perfect way to end an adventurous Hawaiian day: a rainbow!