messiestobjects: Wowies And Owies On The Hawaiian Island Of Maui

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Friday, November 30, 2012

Wowies And Owies On The Hawaiian Island Of Maui

Maui! We had essentially two days there, after saying a tearful aloha to Scott and Sarah, and we decided to head straight for the Road to Hana. It's a 52 mile stretch of road that took us both days to navigate because it's narrow, hella switchbacky, traverses 46 single-lane bridges that were built in 1910, and is all covered in amazing rain forest bordered by precipitous drops into the ocean. The first thing we stopped for, besides a coconut, were the painted trees.

They are called Rainbow Eucalyptus trees, and apparently came from Australia. There is a small grove of them just off of the early part of the road.

Trippy right? I don't have a whole lot to add... we just hung around a while and took pictures. Green, red, yellow, sometimes purple stripes of bark. And a stream of rainbow light!

You can see the ocean from pretty much any hilltop in Maui. Rainbow tree and ocean. Now I know why people like it there.

One last trippy tree. I wanted to lick the bark. I abstained, but I need you to know that it was difficult.

Another attraction along the Road to Hana is the black sand cove. Pictures of sand, and beaches, and water are dull, I know. But black sand! I had to try. We swam and snorkeled.

A rest stop we bathroom-breaked at had rikki-tikki-tavis! What do you calls 'em... Mongooses. Mongeese. Apparently they're a real problem. They eat all the endangered species on the islands, because there's no King Cobras around to battle heroically with.

Cute little monsters, aren't they?

There are a number of waterfalls and natural swimming pools everywhere in the jungle, and we stopped at a couple for swimmies. Just like in LOST, that horrible show that still yet made me envious of island life. See the bald backfloater in its natural element.

We spent the night in a tree house! No electricity. We picked up some grilled chicken off the side of the road to go with the bottle of wine we bought.

I mean, we didn't just pick it up off the ground. There was a guy. With a dirty pick-up and a grill. But we did eat some weird crazy fruits off of trees throughout the day.

Above was our view from the bed, through the very necessary bug-netting. The mosquitoes were... voracious. But let's not dwell on that.

There's something very nice about sleeping in a tree house in a jungle on Hawaii. Happy Anniversary! Grilled road chicken and wine in bed while the bugs dashed hungrily at us from outside the netting was fun.

And the morning view was pretty sweet too. Then we made our mad bug-avoiding dash to the car and got back on the road. We went to see Charles Lindbergh. The toy plane is pleasing.

He's buried in a quiet little church yard...

...with a fantastic view.

There were horsies!

And weird trees!

Actually, there were weird trees everywhere. I have a lot of weird tree pictures. But I figured that after the Trippy Trees, enough is enough. Okay last one, because it's like a portal to Hobbiton or something.

We stopped at a random beach on the way back for a nice swim. There weren't many people there so it seemed perfect. And it was... big waves, clear water, lots of fun. Until we almost died when we got caught by an effing strong current and were dashed over some lava rocks. Got a good scrape on my zombie knee, dammit. We made it out after some minor struggling and were all like, "whew, haha!" But as we were leaving, we saw this sign which of course we hadn't seen upon our arrival.

And that's Maui. It was nicer than I expected. I'd never have made the effort to go to Hawaii if it hadn't been for Scott being there, so I'm glad it worked out that way. Julie and I had a really nice 2nd Anniversary. Wow, I really set the bar a bit too high for only a 2nd. How in hell's bells am I supposed to top that?