The Beginning of the Road

When we spoke of going to Maui with anyone who had actually been there, it seemed the first question they asked was always, "are you going to do the road to Hana?" It's an attraction rated highly on every "things to do in Maui" article you can find on the internet, and apparently one that lived up to the hype.

For those not in the know, the road to Hana is a narrow road that weaves through the mountains along the northeast edge of the island. Peppered with single-lane stone bridges, it takes a good two hours and then some just to drive the 30-or-so miles to the small town of Hana -- and that's if you don't stop.

But the entire point is that you stop. All sorts of things can be found along the road to Hana, everything from roadside stands selling fresh fruit to tranquil waterfalls and beaches to short hikes leading to hidden jewels of nature. In short, the road to Hana is an all-day activity, and we allotted a whole day for it. We were at the town of Paia, a few miles before the official beginning of the road, right around sun-up. We were armed with a list of places said to be worth a stop, and roughly ten hours' worth of daylight to do as many of them as we wanted.

Our early choices weren't the best. Around mile marker 2, we stopped to see a place called Twin Falls. It looked beautiful in the online photos, and the short one-mile round trip hike to get there seemed like a nice, easy start to the day. Perhaps we'd become jaded about gorgeous island settings over the past week. In any case, Twin Falls wasn't nearly as majestic a spot as we'd imagined.

On our hike to get there, though, we spotted a rundown looking van/bus sort of thing on the other side of a thick copse of trees. We dubbed it "Twisty's Bus" (in honor of the current "Freak Show" season of American Horror Story). So that was sort of fun.

We continued down the road to mile marker 10, where we found the Garden of Eden, a botanical gardens and arboretum. We pulled in and walked around for maybe half an hour. We saw a number of beautiful and unusual plants and trees...

...including several brought in from other parts of the world.

The place really was gorgeous, but the two of us quickly found we weren't enjoying it. There were many miles of road ahead, and many more stops that were on our "must see list." We hadn't even explored one quarter of the arboretum, but it already felt like the clock was against us -- every minute we stayed there was a minute we weren't going to get somewhere else. So we decided to get back in the car and keep moving. If there were roses anywhere in this arboretum, we were literally not going to stop to smell them.

That said, the whole time we were walking the garden, I couldn't help but think of my grandmother, and how much she would have loved seeing this place. Maybe she did at some point. (Perhaps I can ask my mom about that.) And I could imagine plenty of people like my grandmother who would happily spend an entire day just at this one place on the road to Hana.

So my advice to would-be Maui tourists: if the Garden of Eden looks and sounds appealing to you...

...you should go ahead and spend a day there. It's early enough along the road to Hana that you could go there, see the arboretum, and then go back on another day to continue farther down the road.

Our next stop was at the "Halfway to Hana" road stand, where we picked up some freshly made banana bread to snack on. We'd decided to skip one or two spots before that just to get ourselves feeling like we were back "ahead of schedule." Maybe we were rushing a bit through what was supposed to be a laid back experience, but the bulk of what we most wanted to see was the farthest stuff down the road.

Fortunately, we did start to relax more and enjoy the drive as we finally started coming to those things...