Mau'i - the Valley Island

Feeling a little sad to be leaving the our home on the Big Island, we have moved onto our next stop on the trip - Mau'i. We took a bumpy flight from Kona to Kahului and watched in awe as the towering green mountains and valleys emerged out of the clouds. As we approached we could see huge 25-30foot waves pounding the outer reefs too. A pretty spectacular sight all round to greet us for the start of our week long stay on our third Hawai'ian island.

We're staying in a really cool little hostel called Peace of Mau'i; truly an amazing find. We have a nice double room with a TV, an amazing kitchen with lots of free food, lots of surfboards, bodyboards and snorkel gear to borrow, and even a hot tub outside! It's pretty awesome, and feels even better after our three weeks living fairly basically in the screen house!

On our first morning we decided to cycle the 23 miles down the huge volcano, Haleakala. We got up at the unearthly hour of 2am(!) and headed down to the local surf town (Pa'ia) where we got sized up for bikes and gear. We jumped into a minibus and drove the hour and a half to the 10,000ft summit. Unfortunately it was cloudy and blowing a gale so we couldn't see the crater at the summit, but that didn't matter too much as soon after sunrise we were our bikes and freewheeling down the road. We got soaked for the first 10 miles and could barely see with all the mud and spray flying up, but then the sky cleared as we got lower and the views across to the west Mau'i mountains opened up, which was spectacular! We arrived back at Pa'ia after an hour and a half, almost dry again, and having pedalled only 400 metres in the 23 miles! We got back and had breakfast and hot tub - all that before 9.30am...

Mau'i has been a good place to surf. On the first day and third days we had chance to head down to the local spot - Ho'okipa Bay. Gaz got excited once again by the 5 foot surf and got himself a board from a local shop. The waves were good, and there were huge sea turtles surfacing all around, which made up slightly for all the locals in the lineup stealing most of the good waves! A day or two later we both also got to bodyboard at a place on the west coast called Polo Beach. Almost deserted and lots of barrelling little waves meant we had a great time, with Rach scoring her first ever tube ride! Unfortunately we didn't make it out to the big wave spot, Jaws, but we heard that it was breaking 30 feet on the day we arrived and all the legends were out there!!

We took a great drive out to West Mau'i in our hire car. The single track road was pretty hairy for the first part of the drive, with lots of 4x4s roaring around the blind corners! This part of the island is much more isolated and quiet than the relatively touristy middle valley dstrict, and we got to see sweeping views of deserted beaches and towering cliffs with almost no-one else around. The best part of the day was stopping at a little lookout and walking down to the sea, where a huge blow-hole was spouting spray from the massive swells eighty feet into the air! Pretty amazing experience, especially when you're standing ten feet away from it! We also stopped on a deserted beach for a couple of hours near a little whaling town called Lahaina. We sat on pieces of bleached driftwood on the golden sand and watched the spectacular sunset over the nearby islands of Moloka'i and Lana'i.

We like this island!!!