Only a month after getting back from Panama i was forced to leave 3 weeks of sub zero temperatures and head to Hawaii. Panama had been planned on kinda short notice, but we'd bought our tickets to Hawaii the previous summer, which is when you need to do it if you want to find a hotel room or rental car. Hawaii was the only state i hadn't been to aside from Maine. Now that i have been there, i can say that Hawaii is the best place you can go during winter in Alaska. On a direct flight you can go from -30F to tropical paradise in only 4.5 hours, just an hour longer than a typical flight to Seattle.
Maui is very small, only 50 miles long and 25 miles across at it's widest point, but it takes FOREVER to get anywhere due to low speed limits and excruciatingly slow tourist traffic. For instance, the road to Hana is only 40 miles long, but it took us four hours to drive it, solely because people seem to enjoy driving an average speed of 6mph and there are almost no places to pass. Sure, it's an old narrow road built on cliffs with 600 sharp turns, but if the fastest driver i came across was a large, fully loaded dump truck, i can only make the conclusion that the other drivers were idiots.
Surfing makes you assume a lot of weird poses.
There were several girls out who were quite good, and actually much faster than the guys at turning and twisting. This girl was one of the best and most daring.
But she was greedy and eventually got stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Not gonna make it..... Or is he?
This guy had some good times too.
Nowhere left to run.
The other major turn off for the place was the robbing of your pocket book and the seemingly unified "branding" of the Hawaiian experience. There were a select few songs by various artists that were played in nearly every single shop, hotel, restaurant, and even airport that we found ourselves in. You were force fed these songs everywhere you went. Most of the the food is expensive, which i expected, but we also ran into annoying hidden fees like being charged a daily fee to park at the hotel, where there were no other choices. It made you suspicious anytime you signed up for anything else. The whole experience was quite a shock that left a sour taste in my mouth after the isolated, relaxing atmosphere i enjoyed in Panama only a month earlier.
Aside from the major complaints though, Maui, (or i imagine any of the Hawaiian Islands) is a place you really should go if you want a nice tropical vacation and want to still be in the United States. It blows away everything else the country has to offer, and is an ideal winter get away for my situation. I already want to go back this coming winter.
A very cool blowhole.
The terrible cold weather we left in Anchorage was actually so powerful that it affected our vacation in Hawaii. Strong winds from under the door of our house to the north were causing a cold snap in Hawaii too, making the locals feel very cold. It still felt great to us but the cool high winds did prevent us from doing much swimming on the beaches. On the other hand, they made for some great surfing conditions on a couple of the days. From what i hear we never hit the surfing locations on exactly the right days but one day we drove around the west side of the island for sightseeing and found ourselves taking a long break at Honolua Bay.
Some high rollers going by.
Honolua Bay is a famous surfing spot, and indeed, there were many surfers out there both times i visited. It's a great place to sit and watch because of this little cape that sticks out into the wave action. As such you get a great view of the surfers with some of them even riding past you and beyond. Additionally, were on the island during mating season for humpback whales, and it was cool to see a guy or girl surfing a wave with a huge whale breaching out of the water behind them. I have a hard time just laying on the beach doing nothing but the surfing gave me the entertainment i needed to just relax and let the time go by.
A lot of neat, weird rock formations to wander through. The rock on the right demonstrates a kind of wind erosion i've often seen in the desert.
Farther up the west coast was another fun spot: a blowhole down on some crazy looking lava terraces and a newborn whale leaping out of the water with it's mother just a few dozen yards away from the cliffs. This blow hole was shooting up 60 feet in the air very regularly. The high winds on this northern tip of Maui were creating some huge waves that were crashing into the cliffs. Down at the level of the blowhole you could stand right at the edge of the lava and watch the crests of these beasts roll by just a couple of feet underneath you. They came in sets of course, with each wave being a bit bigger than the last. The last in the set was usually big enough to crest the terrace as it went by, sending spray all over everyone as it continued on before making a huge explosion of water when it hit the mainland. I took a long time trying to get a perfect shot, which i never came close too (in fact i was screwing up my photos all week) while Maree collected green and amber crystals in some of the rocks.
This grass is way deeper than it looks.
I think a lot of people on the road turn around after the blowhole because there was virtually no traffic after that point. Maybe because the road becomes narrow enough that it is sometimes one way only winding along the cliffs. This was by far the most pleasant driving experience i had while on the island. It eventually goes by some small peaceful communities of locals with no businesses and a few by a few ranches on incredibly nice property luring passersby with wine or small art galleries.
Kahakuloa Village
