Tuesday July 20th, 2010

Words can't really express how wonderful today was! We were the first to get picked up at our hotel for the trek on the road to Hana. To give you a little background, the road to Hana is a 68 mile stretch of highway in Maui comprised of 59 bridges (46 of which are only one lane across and which date back to 1910), 617 curves, and multiple sheer cliffs with no guard rails (enough to make you pee your pants scary). The entire trip to Hana takes you through lush tropical rainforests. As many tourists and locals will explain the Road to Hana isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. The whole trip was incredible, memorable, and so much fun. Intead of writing much more we'll let you experience the journey through the eye of our camera lense :)

(Our tour bus! Try to imagine that thing going over narrow roads between a cliff and inches away from a rock wall!)

(Our tour guide: Dennis. He was born and raised on Maui and with an obvious Hawaiian accent (use of Pidgeon English, was very informative, and extremely humorous!)

(6:00 A.M. ready to roll!)

(In front of a rainbow eucalyptus tree - literally looks like someone watercolored the bark...so awesome!)

(These guys and gals were all over the way to Hana)

(Side of the road - Beautiful!)

 (Beach along the way)

(Another Bay Beach)

(Gorgeous)

(Cam in front of lava rocks in another bay)

(Great climbing tree!)

(This church was the only structure left standing after a big tsunami in the 60's)

(Some of the first falls we encountered)

(Another waterfall and pool)

(Another painted eucalyptus tree)

(Tiny pineapple on a pineapple plant)

(Amazing flower)

(Fresh Local Fruit)

(Lilokoi (Passion Fruit) and mangos)

(Baskets made from ti (pronouced tee) leaves)

(One of the pools in the Waianapanap Caves inside a lave tube)

(Coconut Tree)

(Above the black beaches at Honokalani)

 (Burial Grounds at Honokalani)

(Black beach)

(Lunch! It was actually really good!)

(This cross is made out of lava rock)

(One of the many beautiful pools)

(Cool looking leaves)

(One of several stores and vendors along the road to Hana)

(All of the walls in this little store had antiques all over them)

(Backside of the mountain passed Hana)

(A windy spot on the way back from Hana)

(Another gorgeous flower)

(One of many sand mounds on the backside of Haleakala Mountain)

 (Our last stop before the hotel :)

If you've made it this far through the blog there are just a couple things to keep in mind:

1.) The pictures here do no justice to the amazing beauty we saw today!

2.) Some of the pictures were taken from inside the bus, so they're not of the greatest quality.

3.) These are just a few pictures of the many that we could have uploaded.

Also, on this side of the island there are lots of wild boars, goats, and muskrats which we weren't able to get a good picture of :)

Until tomorrow, I leave you with a most beautiful sunset taken from our hotel balcony just a few hours ago!