Time for a short trip to see old friends and new hikes on Maui. Leaving Kaua’i, the airport had this interesting display of books written by Kaua’i authors. Somebody really went to a lot of work to make a nice and informative display:
Flying on the direct flight to Maui, the plane flies right over the island of Lanai. This is the area we visited during our last trip to Maui. The ferry lands at the harbor on the left, the campground and beach are in the middle, and the luxury resort (Manele Bay) is on the right:
We went to visit Myriam, Oliver, and Delfi. It doesn’t look like it in this picture, but Delphi is now taller than Leilani by a few inches! They both picked right up where they left off, even if they haven’t seen each other in 18 months. Unfortunately for us, that meant singing show tunes from the Sound of Music (they need more practice).
The first afternoon, we went to Ho’okipa beach, which has tide pools. Leilani and Delfi wasted no time exploring together:
This is also one of the top windsurfing locations in the world, and we saw some do jumps off the waves.
Ho’okipa also has turtles. Andy claims he has never seen turtles on a beach in Hawai’i, but now he’s seen over 20 at once–and more and more were crawling ashore.
The first nights, we had a room at a B&B in Kula, about 4000 feet elevation (1200m) where it is cold and strange plants grow.
There is a nice view of the “valley” which is the plain in between the two mountains (volcanoes) that make up the island. The ridge has windmills, and Lanai rises in the distance.
This is also the area of Hawaii’s last operating sugar plantation. Unfortunately, they still burn the cane fields before harvesting to get rid of the leaves. This creates a black cloud over the island in the morning.
In the afternoon, we went on a new-to-us hike with Myriam and Delfi. It’s a state forest called Kahakapao that used to be an area where the Hawaiians would fell and hollow out koa tree trunks for canoes. There are still some koa trees to be seen, but much of the area was reforested with non-native species. Some areas were really pretty, but at the beginning of the trail there was a mountain bike course and over-thinning (like logging, except they leave the trunks laying all over the forest). We followed the loop and hiked over 5 miles.
Sonja was hoping to find edible mushrooms, but it was much too disturbed to find any. We only found a few tiny unidentified ones, and a starfish stinkhorn–nothing you’d even think of eating.
Near the end of the hike (or the beginning if you went counter-clockwise around the loop), the trail crosses a really pretty ravine:
In the car, Andy gave the camera to the girls so they could look at the day’s pictures, and we ended up with selfies:
Sunset over the West Maui mountains from the Pukalani neighborhood where our friends live:
