Sol & I were lucky enough to have our best man Jonas get stationed on Oahu last fall. Previously Jonas was living in Enterprise, Alabama for flight school. During his time in AL he made frequent visits to Little Rock but we failed to make a trip to Enterprise. (Darn) Being the good friends we are, we thought to ourselves, "Gosh he must be lonely in Hawaii, we had better go visit him!" So we decided we would!
So How did we make it to Maui? Well after we booked our tickets Jonas found out he was going to be gone for training during the first few days we were supposed to be in Oahu so we decided to head to Maui on our own adventure as a couple. It was definitely an adventure...
After almost four years of marriage you'd think I'd know that my husband hates long days of travel and that I'd plan trips accordingly. Well I forgot and I didn't plan accordingly, so after 12 long hours of flights and 4 hours of layovers I thought Sol was going to hurt someone. His frustration was first directed at the aggressive sales lady at the rental car place while she continually harassed us in an attempt to make us buy more insurance since the Road to Hana was dangerous and "you never know what could happen". We managed to leave without hurting anyone. We then hopped into our shiny black Mustang convertible and I informed Sol our hotel was 30 minutes away and I knew he was going to hurt me instead :) But luckily he didn't. :)
During our time in Maui we stayed in Wailea Beach at the Marriott Resort. When we checked in we were lucky and they upgraded us to an ocean view deluxe room. The room/view looked a little something like this:
And on the first night the sunset looked a little something like this:
Day two in Maui -
Goal: Conquer the Road to Hana
Task: 52 miles each way of winding roads consisting of 620 sharp curves, 59 bridges, 46 of which are one lane bridges. The road carries you along the sea coast, through lush tropical rainforest, and past multiple waterfalls.
The day started at 6am since that was really 11am our time. We had the convertible top down, sunglasses and sunscreen on, and were on our way to Hana by 7am. At first we kept thinking how easy the road seemed and how this cannot be the road that we had heard so much about. Little did we know we just hadn't made it far enough yet.
Here are a few shots from the drive to and from Hana:
If you look closely below you can see where the road is cut into the curved cliffs
We had to pull over and take a few breaks from the winding roads and unavoidable nausea they caused :)
We stopped at a hippie roadside stand and found these enormous avocados
We ended up buying a pineapple and two Jamaican passion fruit at the hippie stand. The combination turned out to be pure evil for Sol's stomach later that day but luckily we were already back to the hotel by then!
Anyways we made it to Hana in 3 hours and here's our proof:
The drive back took only 2 hours since we were not stopping to look at waterfalls or the scenic overlooks. More to come about the rest of our time in Maui and our week in Oahu!
All about Oahu and our time with our hosts Jonas and Zoe in the next post!
