TuesdayWe were on the road (after a quick stop in the Starbucks in our hotel) at 7AM. Made sure we had a full tank of gas and reset the odometer at road 360. We were about to take the full day long, exhilarating, amazing road to Hana.
I packed all of our valuables and essentials in one knapsack. I took this out at every stop without bothering to even close the top of our convertible. Too many stories of people getting robbed which would quickly turn the day into a nightmare. Snacks and a change of clothing we left in the trunk.
If there is one place to rent a convertible, this is it! With plants and greenery surrounding you on all sides, some sights would be missed in a regular car that you would only be able to see with a convertible.
The Maui revealed app was a lifesaver. Service is really spotty so Google maps is out. Relying on mile markers isn't great either because if you turn off the road to visit the ke'eane coast or the Nahiku road then your mile markers are going to be off. Another good thing about the app was the ability to favorite/mark places so it would allow you to quickly find it on the map
Its physically impossible to do all the sites in one day. It’s imperative to plan were to stop, were to hike/swim and were to keep driving. While I was making my list, I realized that if I would stop and swim in every waterfall that I wanted to see, I would run out of time and energy really quickly. So, I planned to have an extended stay by one of the waterfalls a third of the way in (either Ching’s pond, Three bear falls or Wailua ike) and then another extended stay by the black sand beach.
As we got an early start we took the drive slow allowing locals to pass us whenever there was a place to pull over. Nothing nicer than driving through the jungle with the top down and a perfect 80 degree sunny weather!
Our first stop was half mile past 11 Haipua'ena Falls. A 3 minute walk through a jungle path lead us to a pretty pool with a small falls.
After staying there for a few minutes, we drove on to the 13 mile lookout. What a view!
Next we took a small detour towards Ke'anae Peninsula. The ocean crashes up on the lava rocks, really cool to see and definitely worth the detour.
We took a quick stop over at Wailua Valley State Wayside which had nice views in either direction
Looking out towards the ocean
180 degrees behind us to the mountains
After that we arrived at Ching’s pond. After going down the trail for 2 minutes we get there…. and its completely empty. I know people really enjoyed swimming here and watching the people jump off the bridge. As no one was there and we didn’t feel the need to go swimming yet, we decided to push on.
Soon we came up to the three bears falls. Here was completely the opposite problem. It was packed! We then realized we would have to park up the road and walk all the way down to the beginning of the trail. We also noticed that the beginning part of the trail was a bit steep. So we decided to just take pictures from the bridge and move on.
Finally we came to Wailua Ike falls. With our permit in hand
, we went on a short walk through the woods that would lead us to a huge falls.
We kept going a bit further and it lead us to a really nice pool with a nice waterfall.
Only a few people were there and there was a nice rock to jump off and swim to the falls. Perfect! The water was a bit cold but really nice after walking through the woods to get there.
The girl is taking video of someone jumping off the rock
Right next to the falls
After spending a bunch of time jumping off the rocks and swimming to the falls, we walked back to our car and drove to Pua'a Ka'a State Park. While the falls were nice, we mainly stopped to use the bathrooms!
We kept driving and made two quick stops at Hanawi Falls (I don’t think I took a picture) and
Makapipi Falls just to see the view from the top of the falls.
Both took a minute each but wouldn’t spend any more time on that.
We then took a detour on the Nahiku Road all the way to the end. There is a sign at the end saying the bridge is closed (for good reason, it’s a rotten wooden bridge) so just park in front of the church and walk to the coast. The drive on this road is incredible. You feel like your car will get swallowed up by lush greenery surrounding you from all sides.
At the end of the road (about a 10 minute walk) is the coast with a picnic bench to eat and chill.
We stayed there for a few minutes but not before checking out Nahiku Pond
Now we started getting in to the outskirts of Hana itself. We drove by a few food stands and finally came to Wai'anapnapa State Park, which has the Black Sand Beach
Apparently, there are a bunch of hikes/trails to the lava arch on one side and the cliffs on the other, but as we were getting tired we decided to just stay at the beach itself. As you can see the “sand” is actually small black rocks made from lava
To the right of the beach there is this cool cave that is worth checking out.
Now we drove to Hana bay to try to find the red beach. We found it but rust color is more accurate
At this point we were starting to get tired but we drove on to see the Seven sacred pools. Until now we barley encountered any traffic coming the other way. Now, as it was later in the day there was a lot of cars making the way back from the seven sacred pools. This made it really annoying to pull over every minute or two and maneuverer to let the cars go through. I wanted to yell at them to just do the full loop! That section from Hana bay until the seven sacred pool was the worst driving part of the trip.
We breezed by Wailua Falls without even getting out of the car because as Maui revealed warned us might happen, we had waterfall fatigue!
We finally got to the seven sacred pools. As we were getting tired we decided to do the 0.5 mile loop. Unfortunately, the pools were closed as there was high surf. Not only were they not allowing people to swim they even closed accesses to get close to the falls.
As it was getting late and we were pretty tired we opted out of doing any of the longer hikes through the bamboo forest or to the other falls.
While most of the cars were turning right to go back the way they came, we went left to do the full loop. Wow, what an amazing road. First, if you think there is even a possibility that you won’t finish this road while it’s still daylight out, don’t do it. Many times, you are driving on a one car width, unpaved road at the edge of a cliff.
Then you realize, wait this part doesn’t even have a guardrail!
It’s hard enough during the day, its verging on suicidal at night. That being said, I would highly recommend it. Totally different then the first part of the road but in some ways just as beautiful.
After driving through some narrow, windy, one car width roads we finally came back to normal highways. We got back to our hotel just in time to see another amazing Wailea Sunset
So just some advice for the Road to Hana:
• Do your research beforehand. What I might have loved, you would skip (for example we skipped some caves that you had to crawl through, we heard people who loved it).
• Make sure you spend some time by at least one or two waterfalls. More than that you will probably run out of time or get too tired.
• Rent a convertible! Its made for this road
• Leave early. Then you won’t feel rushed and it wont be as crowded
• Pack all your valuables in one bag. This will make it easy for you to grab quickly by each stop and you won’t worry about getting robbed.
• Do the detours at Ke'anae Peninsula and especially Nahiku Road . Well worth it
• Drive the full loop! Its beautiful. Just make sure you’ll have enough time to do it while its still light
• Get the Maui revealed app. A real-life saver when you have no service
• If you aren’t going to drive the back part of road and you can’t swim in the seven sacred pools (you can check online I think), I would just turn around by the black sand beach and go back there. Not worth the time and the annoyance driving to the seven sacred pools just for that
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