During the week in Maui we bought a few guided excursions. One was for snorkeling. Unfortunately due to high surf we were stuck snorkeling in sub prime areas and the tour pretty much turned into a wildlife cruise. Whales were breaching the water all over the place, massive schools of dolphins were swimming along with the boat, and we even saw a couple of sea turtles, something new for me.
You don't have to travel to the Amazon or Borneo to see something like this, we've already got it in the United States of America.
We took a helicopter tour to Molokai. I wanted to see the cliffs on that island, which are supposed to be the highest sea cliffs in the world. My experience with the small helicopter in Panama had me stoked for the "doors-off" tour offered by a company called AlexAir. This turned out to be a bad idea. The helicopter they put us on was a different, much larger model than the one pictured on the website for the doors off tour. The larger sized aircraft created huge amounts of turbulence in the cockpit that buffeted us all over the place. It was extremely difficult to hold yourself steady, i even had to hold my glasses onto my head so i could see properly.
Additionally, the tour was very rushed. The pilot seemed to be in a hurry, never slowing down, certainly never stopping, and turning around pretty quickly after we got to the cliffs. In general i felt like the whole operation was pretty shoddy and misleading every step of the way. I would advise against using AlexAir.
Molokai itself was a pretty neat island. It's to the west of Maui, long, narrow and far less populated. The cliffs on the west side of island are indeed enormous, and there's really no way to see them other than by the air or by boat. One surprise was that we got to see the second highest waterfall in Hawaii pouring down those cliffs.
The cliffs of Molokai are 3,000 feet high.
I didn't catch the name but this is the second highest waterfall in Hawaii.
Although the buffeting was pretty annoying and even uncomfortable, i was still having a good time with the scenery. I didn't notice though, that Maree was scared to death about what was going on. Apparently she was horrified every time the helicopter would tilt sharply on it's axis during a sharp turn.
I wanted to see where this canyon led and the creek in the bottom of it.
One of our last days on the island i just couldn't take it anymore and decided i needed to go investigate what the "real" Maui was like. There was a pretty cool trail system on the top of Haleakala. You can hike from the very top of the volcano, at 13,000 feet, down through the crater system, through the high steppe, and down all the way to the ocean. They have a few cabins you can stay in too. I didn't have the time or equipment to do that, but looking down into the summit crater made it look like an attractive idea. Instead i decided one afternoon to try and hike cross country down this canyon on the southwest side of the island.
We'd driven by it numerous times. There was an undeveloped neighborhood that got close to the bottom of the mountains. From a water tank on top of a hill you could look up this canyon, and it looked like on the other side of the canyon was an old stone wall. I assumed there must be a trail over there. First i tried walking down the canyon, crossing the bottom and then going up the other side. Turns out the grass down there was up to my shoulders and hiding all kinds of loose treacherous rocks and logs. So i went back up, drove down the hill to the main road and tried to find the highest point i could get to on the other side of the canyon. Continuing on foot i followed an old overgrown jeep trail until it petered out, then angled my way over to where i thought the wall and theoretical trail would be.
The views were getting very nice on top of the ridge. The canyon lies at the bottom of the opposite hillside and in the foreground you can see those annoying chaparral like thorny bushes.
I don't know about the jungle, but these grassy fields were much more difficult than meets the eye. The ground was still completely covered in loose rounded lava rocks of random size. The grass was prickly and bushy enough to obscure all those stones. But the worst thing out there were these scraggly bushes covered in long thorns. They had a way of reaching out and grabbing you from 3 feet away and made a great support beams for tons of occupied spider webs stretching out between them. I'm told these plants are not native, but another example of a plant introduced for some other purpose that ended up ruining paradise.
From here you could keep going right up the mountain. Not visible in this small picture is a waterfall pouring off the side of that mountain in the clouds.
I couldn't believe it, but i never found the stone wall. I think i misinterpreted part of the old exposed lava flow. Once i got over there i realized i was making terrible time. The canyon was long and my best chance for seeing something was to go straight up the side of a nearby ridge that would get me up out of the deeper grasses and away from all the annoying bushes. It took a bit of effort but was well worth it once on top. I realized right away i should have just gone up the ridge from the very beginning. The view was great and the ridge continued for a very long way, potentially offering a route halfway up the mountain to much higher ridge. Once up there things were pretty nice but the sun was setting, so i had to hurry back. After a three hour excursion without seeing anybody else at all i was in a very good mood when i got back to the car at the end of twilight. Finally some relax time! But man, my ankles were super itchy from all the burrs and seeds stuck in my socks. Fortunately there were nice beaches and ocean waves that could remedy that particular condition very quickly....
