We hit Maui on Saturday afternoon after a 45 minute plane trip from Hilo to Honolulu and an almost reciprocal one to Kahului airport in Maui. You can see Maui from Hawaii, fercryinoutloud! Nevertheless, this is the only economically viable option. The airlines have even pretty much gutted the ferry services, which had cost about as much as planes, though the ferries would allow you to take your car along.

Car rental went fairly well. We now possess a pretty nice, pretty new Mazda M3. A huge step up from the Rent-a-Wreck. The Wreck would have lasted about two days on typical Maui roads. The ones that aren't four lanes and choked with traffic grade from narrow, smooth two-lanes to just lanes. The kind your uncle used to drive his tractor from the barn to outlying fields, say. As you glimpse from these lanes to breaks in the dense shrubbery, you're likely to see anything from a mouldering shack to a forty room mansion. Either of these properties will have a sturdy gate and several signs warning dire punishments for trespassing. A strange country this is.

Our new lodgings are east of Kahalui about 35 miles, past Pa'ia town and past Ho'okipa Beach Park. Looking to our left, we saw perfectly formed waves, coming in in perfect sets, covered with windsurfers and further out, kite surfers. Cars and trucks lined the road for hundreds of yards. Turns out there was some sort of kite surfing competition going on. Apparently, the crowding and numbers would have been a little more extreme without it. Of course we had to stop and gawk. The kite surfing was happening on the central area of the beach but I noticed something else happening on the right hand side. Surfing. Quite expert surfing, to my untrained eye, with many of them getting up on the boards and riding smoothly in to the beach. As we got closer, I realized this was a group of kids! Maybe 6 to 12 years old, every one of them tanned nut brown. I was too astonished even to remember my camera, so you'll have to take my word for it.

We finally got to our new lodgings. The house is leased to Pierre Rouault, member of Airbnb. Thank Verizon for GPS. She took us off the major road, all magnificent two winding lanes of it to a much narrower asphalt road, to a yet narrower (one car only, scraping brush on each side) rough asphalt path. Only about half a mile around 6 or 7 tight curves,past as many gated drives, ever downhill. Not so bad. Look for the 160 address and the sign Love underneath it. Full of 4 or 5 nationalities of windsurfers, massage therapists (two German ladies camping in the yard), and us, a couple of middle aged travelers. We'd paid a premium for the private room, the windsurfers preferring the cheaper dormitory rooms. This is a pretty nice house given over to lodging whoever will pay the modest price, run like a college rooming house.

We laid low the first day and a half, venturing only to Twin Falls, a fruit stand with a path to a pretty nice little waterfall. Monday we felt a bit more adventurous. People had been telling us that Halloween in Lahaina was worth seeing. It's only about 40 miles away. In Hawaiian that's a couple of hours. Certainly was worth it. The town was full, there are lots of historical markers, a huge banyan tree along with all the beachside tourist traps one could care to investigate. Oh, also the traditional Halloween parade, not a single costume cut to accomodate a snowsuit.



Today, it was up the mountain. Haleakala by name.  South center of the west island. That's kind of how you get directions around here. Lahaina would be western west island. Oh, hell, here's what it looks like.

Better?
Unfortunately the whole mountain was socked in above about 8,000 feet. No dramatic pictures to be had, though it was definitely a dramatic drive. On the roadmap it looked like an intestine and on the 11 mile road there wasn't so much as 100 yards without a turn. Top speed - 25 mph average speed, maybe 15. Finally saw ne-ne, the Hawaiian native goose. On a lower slope was a grove planted by a long ago forest ranger who wanted to curb  erosion caused by clear-cutting sandalwood, okoi and koa by introducting timber trees from around the world. he was somewhat successful - 13 species of 120 or so survived and thrived. Unfortunately they also choked out native stuff, so now the rangers have to monitor and stamp out the new seedlings. Nevertheless, it does make for a really rugged hike.