Around the West Coast

The western part of the island, just like the one on the east, has a volcano in the middle and various little towns and beaches scattered along the coast. There is also a coastal road connecting all these little towns and beaches, and we decided to spend an entire day exploring what it has to offer.

Although the road goes all the way around, its last portion (traveling clockwise) is also one-lane, even more narrow than the one in the eastern part. Since there doesn't seem to be anything particularly interesting on this stretch (except a shack selling "the best banana bread on the planet," according to our guidebook - which claim let's leave to the author's conscience - not to mention that we had plenty of very good banana bread left over from our Hana road trip) our original plan consisted of the following:

1. Start clockwise
2. See a couple of attractions along the way
3. Do NOT stop at Lahaina (the most happening town on the island and the only one that boasts having a downtown)
4. Instead, drive straight to Ka'anapali (one town over), snorkel near the famous Black Rock and have lunch at the equally famous Ka'anapali Beach boardwalk
5. Continue clockwise, stopping at the Nakalele Blowhole and possibly a couple more points along the way, to the furthermost attraction, called Olivine pools (right before the start of the one-lane stretch)
6. Turn around, drive to Lahaina, and spend the rest of the day there, including dinner on the waterfront and possibly some nightlife entertainment

This was a great plan, but it didn't quite come to pass... However, I still highly recommend it to those who'll learn from our mistakes.

Our first stop, very soon after passing Maalea, was the overlook near Mile Marker 8, which is supposed to be THE best place on the island for spotting whales. Apparently, for them this is also an overlook, for spotting people... they approach it a lot. Since we were there at the tailend of the whale season and haven't spotted a single whale so far, this was our best bet for seeing one. But no luck! - probably, they already started towards Boston... All we saw was a little sailboat, and we took a picture of it on the impossibly blue ocean, with South Maui and Mt. Haleakala in the background.

Next item on the list, ancient petroglyphs near the little town called Olowalu, proved to be quite elusive. Again, the guidebook seemed to provide perfectly detailed directions, and once again they turned out to be completely unreliable when applied to actual terrain. After a lot of wrong turns and circling around we finally asked a guy, who pointed us towards the petroglyphs, "such as they are." He was right on both counts: there is not much to see.

We returned to the coastal road, drove past Lahaina (according to plan) and stopped at the Whalers Village in Ka'anapali. Whalers Village is a collection of ridiculously overpiced shops selling items that you can totally live without, but it also has a few restaurants and, most importantly, a parking. You are not supposed to park there if you just go to the beach, but in our case we planned to have lunch at one of the restaurants, which both justified and validated our parking.

Ka'anapali beach is large and overcrowded, and makes you happy that you are staying in South Maui, away from the teeming humanity. Still, at the rightmost end of the beach (as you face the sea) there is a tall cliff called the Black Rock, which provides perfect snorkeling opportunities. There is a boardwalk along the beach, follow it to the end and then carefully swim out. "Carefully" because there are tons of snorkelers around, who don't necessarily look where they are going, as well as young daredevils jumping off the Black Rock (from about 25 feet up) so watch out for these, too.

Once you are past this initial stretch along the side of the cliff, it is beautiful and tranquil: lots of coral of various colors and shapes, tons of colorful fish and even some turtles. We spent maybe 40 minutes snorkeling along the cliff's tip, then Temma jumped off the Black Rock a couple of times and we went back to Whalers Village for lunch.

I very highly recommend our lunch choice: Leilani's Beachside Grill, an outdoor terrace with a garden-like setting right next to the boardwalk. It provides ocean view and people watching at the same time, and has a delicious lunch menu of fancy salads, sandwiches, a couple of simple entrees (including fresh local catch), and nice desserts. The slightly tricky logistical part was changing from our swimming attire into something more presentable. Temma and I opted for cover-ups, while Alex went and changed completely (there is a public restroom next door).

The first half of our plan thus successfully completed, we got back into the car and drove to mile marker 38, with the intention of hiking to Nakalele Blowhole from there. This is where we made the fatal mistake, which could have totally been avoided if we'd just taken into account our previous experiences with the guidebook... To make a long story short, we started the hike, realized that once again Andrew's so-called directions had nothing in common with the actual terrain, tried to find our way along the cliffs, in the confusion I badly sprained my ankle - hurt like hell!.. - and that pretty much put the lid on our plans for that day, and severely limited the rest of our vacation activities.

However, it needn't have happened that way. Instead, we should have driven another 1/2 mile, parked in a "wide turnout backed by rounded boulders" and hiked to the Nakalele Blowhole from there. The guidebook dismisses this hike as boring, and who am I to argue? - but it has one undeniable advantage: you can more-or-less see the blowhole from the parking lot, at least you can definitely see which way to go, and thus not rely on Andrew's warped sense of geography. When Alex finally made it to the blowhole, after almost an hour of mad scrambling along the cliffs, he could see the cars in the second parking lot from there. He is also the only one in our family who saw the blowhole (Temma returned with me to the car, which I managed to hobble back to, mainly because there were no other options). We waited for Alex in the car for just over an hour, because once he finally managed to find the blowhole, it was relatively easy to get back to the parking lot from there, following one of the inland trails. The problem was finding the blowhole itself...

Since we were on that road anyway, and unlikely to return in the remaining two days, Alex proceeded to drive to our last planned stop - Olivine Pools, and he and Temma went down there to check them out. It is a short, easy hike for anybody without a sprained ankle. The pools didn't look very inviting - maybe because of our family's dampened spirits - so they decided not to go swimming, just took this picture and returned to the car.

Finally, since we could no longer explore Lahaina on foot, as originally planned, Alex decided that it didn't make sense to turn around and return the way we came, and continued along the coastal road onto the one-lane stretch. This proved to be another mistake, because this portion of the road is even narrower and with fewer turn-offs than the one in the eastern part, so the travel was very slow, and then we got stuck behind a line of school buses - and as a result, it was only 3 hours after the accident that I finally got home and managed to put some ice on my throbbing ankle...

The incident/accident, no matter how you look at it, affected the last days of our vacation, limiting our activities. Still, Alex and I went snorkeling near 5 Caves on Saturday, because we remembered that at Makena Landing the road goes right up to the beach, which is narrow and pebbly (not sand) - so Alex managed to drop me off almost by the water edge and I hobbled in, while Alex parked the car and joined me in the water. We had a wonderful time, and one of the turtles rewarded my resilience by coming right up to me, less than arm's length, so it was very hard not to reach out and touch it. You are not supposed to touch the turtles, it rubs off their protective coating or something... our kayaking guide told us so. Also while at Makena Landing that day, we witnessed some kind of a wedding ceremony - with a bunch of people pushing the happy couple (who, truth be told, didn't actually look that happy) off in a long kanoe-like boat, while a female shaman with a wreath on her head was loudly blowing into a humongous seashell. Like that.

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