The Long Day
| Wailuku - Maui | Waikiki
- Oahu
The long day of the 31st of
August
This was the day I left New Zealand and embarked
on the long trek to Aloha Land. It started badly as
I turned up at the airport 2 hours early and had to
wait 4 hours for my flight. Another 5 hours on a plane
saw me in Fiji with 8 hours to kill. The airport was
pretty provincial so I got another stamp in my passport
and wandered out of the airport and found myself in
the Raffles Hotel, dangling my tootsies in the pool,
sipping on a cocktail, and eyeing up the local ladies.
What could have been an horrendous 8 hours turned
out to be quite pleasant. Then followed a 6.5hr flight
to Honolulu, crossing the International Date Line
and gaining 24 hours. Then a 45 minute hop over to
Maui, the island where I had decided stay to escape
the resorts of Oahu and Honolulu. Thus I arrived at
the Banana Bungalows in Wailuku town, on the island
of Maui, in the state of Hawaii, US of A. Even though
I had been traveling for about 25 hours, it was still
only 11:30 in the morning. 46 hours after it started,
the 31st of August ended.
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| The Long Day | Wailuku
- Maui | Waikiki - Oahu
Wailuku, Maui, Hawaii
Tour of duty in New Zealand completed, I found myself
in the land of many a great Elvis film, Hawaii. A
stunning chain of volcanic islands pretty much as
far away from anything as you can expect to get, being
as they are, slap bang in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean. Also the location of Pearl Harbour, where the
yanks got well and truly trounced by the Japanese,
forcing them to get their fingers out of their butts
and lend old Blighty a hand in keeping out the Nazis.
The island of Maui is formed of two volcanoes separated
by about 15 miles, one in the North West, and the
other, Mt. Haleakala, in the South East is the worlds
highest dormant volcano at 10,000ft. Every day, clouds
ring the cones of both volcanoes and dump massive
amounts of moisture onto the lands below. Wailuku,
where I was staying is the third wettest place on
Earth, receiving 400 inchs of rain per year. However,
a couple of miles south or east, it hardly ever rains
at all.
The Banana Bungalow hostel was pretty laid back and
offered free guided trips every day to various places
around the island, but for the first day I just chilled
out under the blazing sun in the hammocks provided,
meeting the strange collection of people that this
hostel seemed to accommodate. Most of them were American
and German wind/kite surfer dudes who hung out in
Maui for 5 months of the year just to get access to
some of the worlds best windsurfing conditions. An
Irish chap there managed to persuade me to go surfing
with him, and despite my very poor performance at
the sport in Australia, I gave it another go. This
time I seemed to get the hang of it a bit more and
caught a few breakers before the pros turned up and
put us to shame.
The tours that the hostel provided were excellent
and were really the only way I could get to see the
island as there was no public transport. One took
us in to the beautiful Iao Valley, which is where
some of Jurassic Park was filmed. We hiked up to hidden
waterfalls through some serious rain forest and swam
in deep pools. Other tours included a trip to the
‘Clothing Optional’ beach where a bunch
of aging hippies pranced around playing drums and
flutes and chanting to the sight of the setting sun.
Unfortunately there were no young, nubile, attractive,
naked, female hippies, just a bunch of wrinkly old
freaks who still think it’s 1969.
I visited a few of the coastal towns around Maui
and a couple more beaches and then on my last day
there, I hired a mountain bike and got a lift to the
top of Mount Haleakala and blasted down the 38 miles
from the summit of the volcano to the beach at Paia.
I only needed to pedal for about 5 minutes in the
whole trip. Most of it was on the road and I must
have been reaching speeds of about 50-60mph. At one
point I was overtaking all the cars in front of me.
It got a bit hairy at times when it looked like I
wouldn’t be able to slow down enough to take
some of the hairpins, but the bike had excellent disk
brakes which got the job done. Fun is not the word.
Absolutely blinding. I like Hawaii.
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| The Long Day | Wailuku
- Maui | Waikiki - Oahu
Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii
I decided to get the flight back to Honolulu a day
early so that I could treat myself to a good night
in a decent hotel. I booked a room from the airport
and managed to get a 60% discount on a suite in the
posh Waikiki Resort Hotel. After I had cleansed myself
in the spa bath I had a wander down to the famous
Waikiki beach and around some of the many exclusive
shops that line the beach front road. I bumped into
some friends I knew from Asia and Australia and we
went out for a meal followed by cocktails on the beach.
I decided that I quite like Honolulu after all.
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| The Long Day | Wailuku
- Maui | Waikiki - Oahu |
