My Trip to Hawaii

[The pictures shown here are "thumbnails". Double-click on them to see something closer to the original.]

After spending a day in Honolulu I was ready to get away to see if I could find the "real" Hawaii. First stop was the island of Maui, where I got up at 2:30 to make the 2-hour drive up 10,000 feet to the top of the Haleakala crater to watch the sun rise. There were about fifty other intrepid tourists there, including a young guy who proposed to his girlfriend as the sun broke over the horizon. The sight was very special, but you won't see any pictures of it because the camera shop lost this roll of film.

This picture is of the beginning of a walk I took down inside the crater. You can tell how early it still is by the shadows. The town that I drove from is located on the bay you can see in the distance.

Here's another view of Haleakala. The crater stretches more than 20 miles, so I only got to see a portion of it. As the morning wore on, more and more fabulous colors started revealing themselves.

Of course there was still lots of plain grey lava around. Here is another entry in the "Plants in Unusual Places" contest. The contrasts that could be seen in this one place were remarkable.

One of the other major "tourist things" to do is to drive the twisting Road to Hana on Maui's southeast. Luckily the road is so narrow that buses can't make the trip. Even so, there were plenty of people to keep me company, at least for the first part of the trip.

I stopped for lunch at the lovely Waranapanapa State Park (Place names here are almost as hard to spell as those in New Zealand). That's a real black sand beach there. And I believe that's Haleakala in the background.

The town of Hana itself isn't much to see - you go there more for the trip than as a destination. But nearby is the Oheo Gulch, which is actually the south end of the Haleakala Crater. Best waterfalls and swimming holes I've seen since the Northern Territory.

Next stop was the Big Island of Hawaii, the "newest" of the islands and the one which still has active volcanoes on it. My first stop was Volcanoes National Park, where I spent a couple of days wandering around.

	My best trek was on the little-traveled Napau trail, which gets you about as close to the active (well, not too active when I was there) Pu'u O'o vent - about a mile away. The trail alternated over lava flows and stretches of rain forest, with the occasional stretch of paved road which had been inundated by recent flows. I call this picture "Abandon thongs all ye that enter here. I'm hoping that this simply fell off of someone's pack and that they didn't have to do this trail barefoot.
	In stunning contrast to the stark sterile lava were the beautiful ohi'a lehua bushes - the first plants that take root in newly cooled lava - don't ask me how. It was refreshing to to see these little oases of color along the track.
	Here I am on the southernmost tip of the Big Island, which as it happens is also the southernmost point of the the United States. There is not much of anything there - Just a few fishermen and the crashing of the ocean. It finally showed me that there are a few places on the islands that are still pretty much unspoiled.

	This picture is of the beginning of a walk I took down inside the crater. You can tell how early it still is by the shadows. The town that I drove from is located on the bay you can see in the distance.
	Here's another view of Haleakala. The crater stretches more than 20 miles, so I only got to see a portion of it. As the morning wore on, more and more fabulous colors started revealing themselves.
	Of course there was still lots of plain grey lava around. Here is another entry in the "Plants in Unusual Places" contest. The contrasts that could be seen in this one place were remarkable.
	One of the other major "tourist things" to do is to drive the twisting Road to Hana on Maui's southeast. Luckily the road is so narrow that buses can't make the trip. Even so, there were plenty of people to keep me company, at least for the first part of the trip.
	I stopped for lunch at the lovely Waranapanapa State Park (Place names here are almost as hard to spell as those in New Zealand). That's a real black sand beach there. And I believe that's Haleakala in the background.
	The town of Hana itself isn't much to see - you go there more for the trip than as a destination. But nearby is the Oheo Gulch, which is actually the south end of the Haleakala Crater. Best waterfalls and swimming holes I've seen since the Northern Territory.