Aloha, Maui!!

Sometime in January, we got an offer to stay at the Maui Marriott Ocean Club for 1/3 of the regular rate if we sat through a sales pitch for their vacation club. We’ve done this before and think it’s definitely worth it! Besides, we don’t say no to a trip to Hawaii. It’s one of our favorite places in the world! This was our third visit, but the first to Maui, and hopefully not the last.

I was trying to figure out how to extend the trip and realized we should sleep in a campervan for a couple of nights, which easily sold Michael on the idea. He is up for anything that resembles RVing. Plus, we would earn our Hawaii sticker for the ubiquitous state sticker map that RVers have on the side of their rigs.

So, at the end of April, we left our house parked at an Albuquerque RV park, and flew to Maui for a week. The resort was on the northwest side of the island in Ka’anapali. We really liked the views of Lanai and Molokai.

Our room was oceanview and it had a full kitchen including a blender so we made the best pina coladas with fresh frozen pineapple, condensed coconut milk, and local toasted coconut rum. We basically sipped pina coladas and snorkeled for 5 days straight.

Black Rock Beach provided great snorkeling within walking distance of our hotel.

We also drove north to snorkel at Kapalua Bay and Honolua Bay.

I had an amazing encounter with a honu (green sea turtle) that swam up to me at Kapalua Bay.

Honolua Bay has a coral reef that you can reach via a boat tour or you can swim from shore (what we did). This was our first time snorkeling at a reef and it was absolutely incredible.

And then it was time to move into our campervan, which was basically a minivan with a bed, a pullout drawer with a camp stove, and an electric cooler. It was 5 feet shorter than our truck!

It was the perfect way to experience Maui’s famous road trip, the Road to Hana.

The Road to Hana has 600+ curves and 50+ one-lane bridges in 64 miles along the rainy windward north shore of the island. It’s a beautiful drive through lush rainforest with a lot of stops to choose from. It is really about the journey, not the destination here!

Most of the bridges have a waterfall and you will see people swimming in a few of them.

One of our favorite stops was the Ke’anae Arboretum to see rainbow eucalyptus trees.

The main snack on the Road to Hana is banana bread and there are multiple stands selling it along the way. We also stopped for coconut ice cream at Coconut Glen’s. Our other food stops were Mahi Mahi from Kilo’s Kitchen and Huli Huli Chicken, which is basically delicious Hawaiian BBQ chicken that we’ve only ever seen sold under roadside tents.

The highlights of the road trip are a couple of beaches close to the town of Hana.

First, was Kaihalulu red sand beach. We originally weren’t sure if we should do this because while the beach is public, you have to hike on private land on an unofficial unmaintained trail that could be dangerous if it has recently rained. But we were easily convinced by a local who said it’s a must.

We were really glad we did it because the color combination of the water and sand was stunning. We had seen green and black sand beaches on a previous trip to the Big Island but this red sand is so beautiful!

That night we camped at Wai’anapanapa State Park, known for its black sand beach. We arrived as the park was closing to day visitors and thought we’d be able to do some hiking that evening. But the ranger told us we had to stay in the campground which was just a small meadow (shown in the campervan photo above) and it seemed like he was serious so we obliged.

The next morning we hiked the North Shore trail.

Afterward, we drove past Hana to visit the Kipahulu district of Haleakala National Park for more hiking. We did the ‘O’heo Gulch and the Pipiwai trails.

The Pipiwai trail went through a bamboo forest and ended at the 400′ Waimoko Falls. The waterfall was so much more impressive than the photo and there were at least 4 other adjacent falls on this massive cliff.

Next, we reversed the Road to Hana and drove up to the Summit district of Haleakala NP. Watching the sunrise at the summit of this dormant volcano is one of the most popular things to do in Maui, even though most people have to leave their hotels in the middle of the night to get a parking spot by 4 am, even with the required reservation.

We camped at the park’s Hosmer Grove campground so that we could have a chance to see the sunset and sunrise. Sometimes the clouds can wash it out. The sunset ended up being better than the sunrise, plus it was a bit warmer (but still frigid with the wind!)

Our last few hours were a little disappointing because we didn’t finish the Sliding Sands trail that we started. The problem was that we didn’t plan to hike the entire 11 miles down into the volcano crater, which had to conclude with hitchhiking back to our van. Our flight was that night and neither of us has ever hitchhiked before (even though the national park encourages it for this hike). However, once we started, it took every ounce of common sense we had to turn around and go back. It really came down to not packing enough water.

If we ever make it back to Maui, we’ll complete this hike!

Next up is a short blog on what we did in Albuquerque between other travels.