Day Eleven: Making the most of our car

Well today it was out of bed early....7:30am!!! And that was after snoozing it three times since 7am! This was seemingly new territory for us, but we managed. Actually, it was a great idea getting up early as we had a big drive ahead of us.

Armed with our Road To Hana CD, we loaded the player and started this majestic drive. Today as the CD said, we took the long and gorgeous winding road to Hana, which ended up taking about 7 hours with several stops, hikes, waterfall visits and many, many, many photo opportunities and of course lunch. We could have gone swimming at the waterfall, but it was almost too fresh to put your feet in. 

If you enjoy driving the snakey bends and tight turns, this is for you. The drive was really fun, with about 50 single lane bridges, so you always had to have your wits about you, so as not to crash or to avoid falling dirt / rocks. After a very limited selection for lunch in Hana, we ventured back to a stop that we'd previously missed close by, because we were starving. From there it was a good 2 hour drive back to civilisation, but we stopped in at Wallmart at the main downtown area of Kahalui (near the airport) to pick up some supplies.

It was nice to be back to literally scrub off the mud and dirt gained from the various hikes in thongs. One of the hikes mentioned on the CD was of a bamboo forest, which the narrator actually warned us about, as it was technically trespassing, but still alluded to going to! It was steep and slippery in parts because of the higher rain fall in this area, but nothing like we'd ever seen before. It was well worth the risk!