Road to Hana

Our last day was a let down. We did the Road to Hana. We downloaded an app to help us and wrote down the recommended stops our hostess had in the book in the condo. It was an adventure, but not so fun,

The Road to Hana is a winding narrow road up a mountain (volcano?) to a small town. There are tourist stops on the way, you decide which you want to stop at.

We started out by checking out a small town where Willie Nelson opened a restaurant. That restaurant was closed and the town was totally crowded. I couldn’t find a place to go to the bathroom much less a place for us to park our giant rental truck.

So we stopped at Ho’opiki to use the johnny on the spot. This turned out to be the most excited stop of the day—HUGE waves that I’d only previously seen on TV. Watch this video and look for the teeny dots—those are the surfers. So crazy!

The road itself was about as we expected, tight turns, one lane bridges, not enough room without warning, cars coming fast down the mountain. About two turns in and Scott admitted I was right, we should have gotten a small rental car. One crazy u turn uphill our tires spun on the wet cement and we almost didn’t make it.

We had plans to stop at a couple of places but they came up to fast and we missed them, they were not well marked at all. Then we got hungry. We stopped at a sign that said they had food for sale. A couple of hippies acted very nonchalant to tell us they didn’t have any food for sale that day.

We decided to stop at the Garden of Eden on our way to the best stop (complete with hikes, waterfalls to swim in, a blow hole, arches and food). They guy at the gate charged us an exorbitant amount of money and informed us that the cafe was closed. We bought some expensive snacks from him and devoured them in the truck before setting off on foot to try to follow the map into then out of the garden.

We did see some pretty plants. Of course, i was in a giant hurry and Scott wanted to take a picture of every pretty site. We saw some cool bamboo, some tropical flowers, an unimpressive waterfall and the rock that is supposed to be at the start of Jurassic Park. It was hot and sweaty, boring and mostly old people wandering around.

We got back in the car to figure out how much time it would take to get to the best stop only to find out that you had to make reservations ahead of time. Erg. So we left.

And drove back, dodging construction and utility vehicles coming from the opposite direction, tired and with empty stomachs. And drove an hour back to our condo.