Flora – Page 9 – John Wise

Disclaimer: Back in May of 2006, when I started posting about our vacation to the Hawaiian Islands, we were severely limited regarding photos I could share due to bandwidth limitations. Here in 2022, I’m updating these posts using the original image and text I shared, but I’m adding the rest of the photos I would have liked to share if bandwidth and storage had not been issues 16 years ago.

Our second day on Maui started up at Haleakalā Volcano National Park near the summit of 10,023 feet, but not at sunrise, as some might think. It’s not that we are averse to waking especially early to be up here at the break of dawn, but that wasn’t part of what we bargained for to be here.

As a matter of fact, we would be taking off from here after the briefest of 10-minute visit which is all that our driver Mike allocated for this bit of sightseeing.

[This interesting-looking bird is a chukar partridge. Chukars originally lived in Asia but have been introduced to many countries as game birds. – Caroline]

You see, our adventure begins 3,000 feet below our current location.

Well then, here we are at the beginning of it all. Mountain Riders, the only company I could find that would let us ride down the volcano on an unguided tour, provided us with bikes with some heavy-duty moped brakes, helmets, gloves, rain gear if we wanted, and backpacks – for only $59 each! The reason we must start here instead of at the summit is that tour companies are not allowed to have their guests begin their ride from up there, so they start right here at the entrance of Haleakalā Volcano National Park.

Outfitted with our bikes and mandatory helmets, we began our 28-mile downhill coast. Good thing I had the forethought to snap this photo as it’s the closest to an action shot that I’d get today, not that I didn’t try multiple times to snap off some photos while barreling down the mountain.

Regarding the speed of our descent, we requested the self-guided option as we knew from the company’s literature that the ride was maybe 2 hours long, which sounded to me like a race with zero opportunities to stop for photos. Not that we were always moving along at a snail’s pace, but we did stop frequently to capture the highlights, such as our thrilling ride through the Fabulous 29’s, a series of 29 switchbacks where, at times, we hit speeds faster than the posted speed limit.

We glided past eucalyptus trees, and of course, we had to stop to savor their fragrance.

Is the chicken somehow the state bird of Hawaii? They are everywhere.

“Oh, might we get some kind of tropical yummy there?”I hear from Caroline, who obviously has her sights set on dropping in. “What is this, lotion with a passion-fruit scent? Yeah, we’ll take that.” As I’m writing this, the Sunrise Market is no longer in existence (it closed back in 2012), and according to Google Maps, the 8.4 acres might be for sale.

Here we are at 14934 Haleakala Highway, the halfway point and only about 14 miles from our destination.

Pineapple growing on Maui Hawaii

Temptation was hard at work, begging us to snag this perfect specimen of pineapple that nobody could possibly ever miss. And we would have if it hadn’t been sitting behind the sign that sternly warned – NO TRESPASSING!

There were no such signs telling us to stay out of the taro patch; I guess nobody really cares about making poi.

Good thing we were naive about sugarcane otherwise, we should have grabbed a stalk of it and started chewing it up.

We reached Kaulahao Beach in Paia in the nick of time. Our tour company was getting worried about us because we’d been out so long. Well, maybe they should have informed us that there was a version of self-guided that could be too slow. I feel that it was with some reluctance that they even picked us up.

But our day wasn’t over, and the sea figures into what comes next. We had just visited Snorkel Bob’s in Kihei to rent some gear we needed.

Yep, it was time to finally get into the waters of Hawaii after being here on the islands for five days already.

Keawala’i Congregational Church down south of Kihei. Yesterday, when we were on the Road to Hana and circumnavigated the southern part of Maui, we could tell there was a road closer to the ocean, but we were running late, and so this afternoon, with sunlight still in our favor, we were able to make it out here.