Road to Hana

On Wednesday I woke up early so I went down to try and see the sun rising. It was raining and I was in my flip flops so I should have turned around, but for some reason I kept going.  It was nice that there weren't hardly any people out though.

I had the beach all to myself.  

There is a sidewalk that runs along the beach and there are a few different resorts along the path.  I wanted to explore it so I walked down the path for a while.

Everything is so green and beautiful. It was cloudy and rainy the whole time, but you could see the sun poking through the clouds a bit.

After slipping on my wet flip flops for a while I decided I should head back.  We checked the weather and it was supposed to rain all day so we decided to rent a car that day.  It was nice because they had a rental place in the lobby, so after breakfast we went down and got a car. 

It was very hard to plan a trip for somewhere we have never been.  It also made it tricky that a lot of things were closed because of the fires.  One thing that every website suggested was the road to Hana. We didn't know it at the time, but a rainy day is not ideal for this, especially if you aren't driving an SUV.  

The guy at the rental car place gave us a map and showed us some of the places we should stop and what to avoid in the rainy weather.  We thought between the map and our phones we would be able to figure things out.  The fact that we didn't have service most of the day put a wrench in that plan.  When we did have service it was very spotty.  

We were on the Hana Highway for a long time.  I had a hard time figuring out when the "road to Hana" started and where we were.  The road got very narrow after a while.  This was the good part where there were two lanes, but quite often there was only room for one car.

You can see the bridge in this picture, that is the road. It was so narrow in places and it was very windy, so driving on it in a rainstorm was not fun.  There are places along the road that you stop and hike to beaches or waterfalls, but it was pouring so that wasn't going to work. Finally after we had been on it for a while and were probably halfway to Hana we decided to turn around. It was not fun in the pouring rain and not very safe.

We had people behind us the whole way up the road, but when we turned around there wasn't anyone behind us so we were able to stop and get some pictures. This cow was climbing over the fence onto the highway right next to us.

The drive was beautiful.  We were surrounded by lush, green plants and trees.  There were a few colorful flowers, but it mostly just green.

There were a bunch of roosters on the side of the road.

There was a little beach town called Paia that the guy suggested we stop at.  It is at the beginning of the road to Hana so we were going to try and get some lunch there.  It was pouring when we got there and we couldn't find any parking, so we decided to keep driving and find something to eat along the way.  Spoiler alert, there is nothing to eat along the way! When we were driving back we were pretty hungry by the time we got back to Paia.  Luckily it had stopped raining and we found this little shaved ice place that had parking spaces! I got mango and coconut, it was delicious!

Keith got coconut and pineapple. We were warned that things were very expensive in Hawaii, but we were not prepared for just how expensive.  I think it was $26 for our two shaved ice, we did tip him a couple of dollars because he was so excited to see us because we were his only customers that day so far because of the rain.  After that we went back to Kahului.  Kahului is the where the airport is and all of the major stores like Walmart and Costco.  It was about 25 minutes away from our resort. We did our souvenir shopping at Walmart and picked up some supplies that we needed, like better sunblock! We tried to find a local place to eat, but we were starving by this point and we were right next to a Chick-Fil-A so we just ate there.  I had a migraine from not sleeping well and driving on the windy road, so I was happy to get some real food in my stomach. 

We got back to the resort and relaxed for a bit and then we went and got some snacks before we headed down to the beach and the pool for the evening. We looked out the window and saw a double rainbow.

There wasn't much of a sunset because of all of the clouds, but we were happy that it had stopped raining finally.

We pretty much had the beach to ourselves.  We got in the ocean for a bit.  It felt weird having it so deserted, I started worrying that we were breaking the rules by swimming after dark.

After the beach we went up to the pool, that was pretty much empty too.  We found this great spot that had a hot tub in a cave inside the pool. It was so nice to relax and have the place to ourselves. 

We swam for a while and then we walked back up to our room. I loved looking at this cute chapel. I'm not sure what they use it for, but it sure looked pretty all lit up at night.  It was another great day, a rainy Hawaii day, is still an amazing day!