Hawai'i - Day 6

Well everyone, great news. First, lets get the big news out of the way:

I am a godfather

Heather and Seb just had their second child: Lucas Xavier Dufourmontelle. 7lbs 12oz, 19 inches long. Somehow they just happened to catch us when we were in the town of Hana getting some fresh fish for dinner tonight. I'm so happy I could burst. This means that I will be coming into KC here this next week sometime. I'm very excited to see everyone.

Now, for the less important news: I have internet, kind of. By some miracle of Hawaii, I picked up some very, very faint wireless signal from the porch of our cabana, so I am getting a blog in as quickly as I can.

Today started pretty early: 6:15am. We wanted to get the car packed and ready to go early so that we could beat the huge crowds on the road to Hana. It is a really wild barely 2 lane road that twists as much as the last video we put on the blog, but narrower and more traffic on it going both ways. Every mile or so is a spectacular view (as you'll see from the photos). We could see the ocean every once in a while with different views at each stop. Sometimes it was a high up pull out with green cliffs on both sides, sometimes it was a penninsula, and other times it was just a beautiful beach.

Anyway, we got on the road just after 7:15 and started toward the center of the island where the road to Hana starts. We got to the small town of Paia by 8am, and were all set to pick up some pastries and morning goodies (we had a small breakfast of cereal and fresh fruit already). However, nothing in town was open until 8:30. I didn't want to wait, so we found one little tiny coffee shop open and got Josh a coffee. We went on and quickly found our first stop.

We were excited to walk to a waterfall/swimming hole, and started off. We found a little set of water falls, but decided to continue on (despite the fact that there was a rope for swinging and jumping into the pool. We kept walking and passed about 8-10 people carrying cameras, but not wet. We weren't sure what to expect, since we thought the point was to swim and no one was wet. We finally passed a couple who were friendly, so we asked about the falls. They said it was ahead, but you had to "get wet" to see it. No problem for us! We walked a while more, not running into many other people when we saw it. We had to wade about 100 yards tops in a river bed that only went to our knees. We walked to a huge pool with a 30 foot waterfall, equipped with a rope swing next to the falls. No one was there and no one had been in it. We were slightly leery, but since we are adventurers, we went for it. It was soooooo cool. The water was about 70 degrees, but felt cool and it was deeper than I could reach in the middle. I immediately swam for the rope and found a cairn of rocks for jumping off of. It was fun, but unfortunately, I was not tall enough/strong enough to keep my whole body out of the water the whole way to the falls and splashed into the water early. Josh loved it too. We had the whole place to ourselves for about 25min. Then, people started coming and noticed that we were in the water. Apparently, everyone was waiting for someone to be brave enough to go first. From then on, as we swam/walked out, we passed about 50 people. No one else today would have a picture free of people in it. We were so lucky.

From there, we continued on, but kept stopping whenever our guide book told us to stop, or we found something beautiful. our next major stop was at the arboretum (sp??) where we saw a ton of kinds of exotic plants-hibiscus, ginger, and the coolest tree-a gum tree that looked like it was painted lots of colors. We also found another swimming hole (minus a rope), and again, many people looked, but none swam (except a family we saw on the way up coming down in their suits). Again, the water wasn't particularly cold and it was easy to get too, I don't know what is wrong with people... Anyway, we had a good swim and cooled off quite a bit (the humidity was very high here and hot). We got back in the car and kept driving from swimming hole to swimming hole. We took LOTS of pictures.

We finally got just outside of Hana and found a stand that sold the pastries I missed this morning. I had a coconut cake with coconut pudding filling. Josh had a oatmeal raisin cookie that was to die for. We were happy, but still hungry for lunch (everywhere that was supposed to have food was either really busy, or closed on the way to Hana). We decided to splurge on a lunch (and eat dinner in as usual) and ate at the very expensive Hotel Maui-Hana. It was pretty good. Josh had a 3 course dinner of cold avacado and crab soup, pan fried marlin, and flourless chocolate cake for desert. I had a barbeque sandwich of local pig, which was good but fatty. I also had a Mai-tai, which was so strong I immediately handed Josh the car keys. Oi! We headed to our new hotel/cabana room to check in.

A few miles outside of Hana was our oasis. This cabana is in the middle of a fruit farm/rainforest looking area. We are the only building in sight and very secluded. We also had a 2 person hot-tub on the porch. We can see the ocean from our bed/living room/porch and are surrounded by ginger, hibiscus, and papaya trees. It is soooooo beautiful. We checked in, unloaded the car and sat on the bed looking at the view (at least that's what us young people call it these days!). We decided that we needed milk, bread, and our fish from costco somehow went bad, so we set off for the only 2 markets (literally) in town.

Boy, those markets were quite an experience! I don't know how the local people do it. It was like a camping store, not many varieties and not many things to buy. Also, one of them was a grocery and hardware store combined. It was wild.

With fish, milk, and bread in hand, we headed back to the cabana. We immediately fixed a drink and sat in the hot tub. Wow, that was totally worth it!!! Now we found a signal and are blogging. We intend to start early again and head to the state park (the one from earlier in the trip, but the East side) before the beach crowd drives in (it takes about 2-4 hours to get here, only 52 miles away, if that tells you how slow, curvy, and scenic it is...). We'll try to blog again tomorrow!

Enjoy the pictures!

Hawaii Day 6