Road to Hana - Maui

We were only in port one day for Maui, so we made sure to book an excursion beforehand. A group of fellow 'Odysseans' signed up for the Road to Hana tour thru Hawaii by Storm. Since all 6 of us were from the ship, they made sure to change their pick up and drop off times to accomodate our schedule.

Road to Hana is a famous stretch of road along the coast of Maui. We passed several waterfalls, hillsides full of bamboo, and the exquisite Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. We made several stops during the 8 hour tour, including a roadside Fish Stand for lunch, and Auntie Sandy's banana bread stand. This is so famous that people from the ship had pre-ordered 72 loaves of the bread and we were picking them up. Of course, we bought - and ate - one loaf ourselves. 

Aunty Sandy's Banana Bread

Auntie Sandy's is so famous because it was featured in an episode of Gordon Ramsey's TV show, Uncharted. Here is the episode with Auntie Sandy's - take notice of the flooded/swollen waterfalls in his video. When we saw it, it was just a trickle in comparison. According to Jamie, our driver/guide, it was just luck that Ramsey went to aunty Sandy's rather than another banana bread stands that sells the exact same bread. It was a day when most businesses were closed because of the superbowl, but aunty Sandy's was open. The other stands, like 'Halfway to Hana' are even run by family members, using the same recipe from their mutual grandmother.

Traffic jam and long lines at Aunty Sandys! Luckily people on the ship pre-ordered their loaves and we just had to pick them up.

Red and Black sand beaches with lava tubes

The red sand beach is right near the Huli Huli Chicken stand at Koki Beach Park. So beautiful.

The black sand beach, with it's lava tube is right at Hana. This was the furthest part of our journey on the road to Hana. It's called, cleverly enough, Black Sand Beach. It appears to be part of Wai'anapanapa State Park.

The whole park was very nicely done.

Building with bamboo 

We all know what bamboo looks like when you're looking at the trunk of the plant, but have you ever seen the top? This hillside of bamboo was pointed out to us. I would never have known. Bamboo is prolific in these parts and our tour guide lamented the fact that using it as a building material does not meet code and she wishes that they'd change that law because she thinks it is a great for construction. See this discussion on Reddit.  There is one company who has figure it out - Bamboo Living - and they have kits for building tiny homes - check it out here.

Turtles sleeping on beach

To top off a fabulous day, when we were almost back to the ship we got to see the famous turtles sleeping on the beach at Ho'okipa Beach Park. If you didn't know they were there, you'd miss them even though there was quite a crowd. They look just like rocks.

This is not normal. Green turtles in the rest of the world only go up on the beach to lay their eggs. Not sure how the Hawaiian green turtles got so smart to realize they could sleep while breathing air on the beach. 

Learn more by scanning - or using lens - on the QR code in tthis image:

Last stop - home! 

Thank you to our master story-teller and Road-to-Hana driver, Jaime for a great day and a successful delivery of 36 loaves of Aunty Sandy's Banana Bread.