Blog : Maui

1652 posts
4/7/2015 11:07 am

Maui

I recently spent a week on Maui with a lady friend.
We stayed at a hostel in Wailuku for the first three nights.
It was pretty pricey for a hostel, but they ran guided tours out to various sites on the island, so that offset the high price of the room to a degree.
The hostel catered mainly to younger people. so there was a fair bit of drinking going on.
I woke up one morning and the toilet was blocked with vomit.
My companion didn't like the place because the bathrooms were pretty filthy. I wasn't keen on them either, so just cleaned them myself.
We did a 12 mile hike on the dormant volcano.
When we started off the guide did a geezer check on me, my companion, and an Aussie a few years younger than me. I think I was the oldest person to ever do this hike. I assured the guide I had done lots of stuff harder than this.

We had interesting hiking companions. I talked to three Swiss guys on the early stage. One was half-Swiss and half-Aussie, so his English was flawless. Another was a Moroccan whose family finally got Swiss citizenship after living there for many years. He described the process to me. His mother had to take German lessons for two years, and then to pass a test before the family could get citizenship. The Moroccan was fluent in Swiss-German and German since he grew up there.

The hike dropped 1500 feet from the 8000 foot level where we started, and then climbed back to 8000. My companion got vertigo towards the end, and I had to help her back for the last two or three miles. The Aussie and a young lady were the last out.
They drove us up to the top where there is a National Park, and we watched the sun set into the clouds with a couple of hundred others.
I'm happy we were on a guided trip because I would not want to drive that road to the top. It's two lanes, no shoulders, and lots of switchbacks.
We then rented a car at the airport, and drove to Hona. That part of the island is wet. The NP there gets 300 inches of rain yearly.
The last three days and two nights were at the resort area on the other side of the island. Quite different from the Hona area.
Accomodation is not easy to find in the resort ares. We drove around looking for a Comfort, Best Western, or Quality Inn and found nothing. Lucked into a resort that had privately owned condo available for rent. It was quite lovely. Anyone looking to go there shoul pre-book is my concllusion.

Interesting things on Maui:
Feral chickens. They are evreywhere. You wake up to roosters in the morning.

Mongooses. The place is full of them, and you see them scurrying across the road. They were brought to the island in the mid-1800's to kill the rats in the cane fields. But nobody considered that mongoose are day animals and rats only come out at night. So the mongoose kill few rats, but wiped out the ground dwelling bird population.

Strange rules on buses. Tried to take public transit to airport to get a car, and the bus driver wouldn't let me on because my pack was too big. The bus only had two passengers on it. Someone told be they have a similar rule in Honolulu.

Spam. They really are fond of it as rumoured.

Store hours. Most stores seem to close at 5, but open earlier than what I'm used to. There was a nice little grocery store near the hostel that opened at 5:15 AM.

Narrow roads. The roads are mostly two lane with no shoulders. I talked to a couple of cyclists about that, and they just are used to it and schedule their rides when the traffic is mostly going against them. Both of the guys I talked to had ridden up the the 10K foot level on the dormant volcano. Too scary for me.
The road ot Hona narrows to one lane in some places, and one has to watch for oncoming traffic. It's a slow drive because of the narrowness and the constant curves.
The road from Wailuku to the resort area on the northwest side of the island is fine. It actually has shoulders.

Rentier1

4/8/2015 8:30 pm

hobsonschoice

I don't know.

There wasn't one the day we were there.

hobsonschoice 75F

3600 posts
4/8/2015 6:57 pm

I remember that Banyan tree in Lahaina, definitely a beauty. Do they still hold the farmer's market beneath it?

Rentier1

4/8/2015 2:31 pm

She's the one who made the hostel reservation.
We are both big fans of hostels.
But some are better than others.
As rule we try to get into a Hosteling International one because they are well managed, but Maui does not have one of those. I think I did see one in Honolulu.

Didn't really have to clean the vomit.

It all disappeared once I used the plunger to unblock the toilet.

Do I detect a note of hostility?

Is it because I made an ungentlemanly reference to your BMI at some point in the past?

Rentier1

4/8/2015 6:43 am

I bought one of those T-shirts in Lahaina.

Lahaina is worth a visit.
The road along the beach has the usual touristy stores, but there are also some pretty nice ones.

Lahaina also has the biggest Banyan tree I have ever seen.
It was planted a 100 years ago and nurtured by the town.
It spreads over an area half the size of a football field.

Rentier1

4/7/2015 9:24 pm

Indigenous ground dwelling birds.
Dunno if the mongoose go after the chickens.

Rentier1

4/7/2015 9:22 pm

It was more than sufficient. We had a great time.

frenchsalsa2 77F

7809 posts
4/7/2015 7:34 pm

Thanks for your great blog... sounds like a great trip (other than the hostel, of course). I believe you can hike a great distance. Many of my friends in western Canada, much older than myself, seem to go on daily hikes of 10km, 15km, 20km, etc. I don't think I could, even though I used to be a jogger and then downsized to a power walker but I know hiking is totally different.

Abelle2 83F