Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210001
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HANA, MAUI LENGTH: Long
You will need a steady hand at the wheel, a reliable vehicle and a degree of faith. You must trust that if you give this road your full attention for several hours, the great snaking beast will not only let you live, but reward you with one of the greatest drives on the planet.
The payoff is not what you find at the end of the road in sleepy little Hana, but in the sense of place that a stranger develops along the way. The more times you park and leave your car, the more the road will reward you. Waterfalls. Lava flows. Taro patches. Wind-battered 19th century churches. A secluded luxury hotel. The pools of Oheo Gulch.
The highway is also a Zen thing. Mile by mile, as you navigate its 600-some curves and 52 bridges, you get used to the idea that around each corner there may be an explosion of colorful flowers, or a big rig coming at you on a one-lane bridge. If it's the big rig, you retreat quickly to the road's earthen shoulder and gather your equanimity. Then it's on to the next corner, and burst of rain, or flash of brilliant sunshine.
Parts of the road follow ancient paths that predate the 1778 arrival of British Capt. James Cook. Other stretches weren't cut through the densely grown slopes until this century. The road wasn't completed until the 1920s, and the highway wasn't paved until the early 1960s.
I drove the highway last October. Arriving in the late afternoon at Kahului Airport, I raced the sun through those 50-odd miles of road (map and road sign mileage varies) and reached my hotel in Hana at dusk. It was a journey of just over two hours - an hour less than most guidebooks recommend for an enjoyable drive - and it was no way to relax.
Setting out early from Hana, I crept along at 20 mph, probably stopped a dozen times and savored that strange sensation: to be in a car but not in a hurry. This time the journey took five hours. Anyone who can find a way to break up the driving with an overnight in Hana ought to do so.
If you start at the airport, on Maui's windward side, the highway begins three miles to the northwest, undramatically. Just off Kahului's main drag, a sign announces that you're 55 miles from Hana.
Look to your right, and you'll see the lower slopes of Haleakala, which lead to the upper slopes, which lead to the volcano's rim, 10,023 feet above the sea. Ultimately, the highway will trace a meandering semicircle to the other side of that mountain. But in this first stretch of 16 miles, the route remains largely straight, with speed limits as high as 45 mph.
The next man-made attraction - and the last chance to buy gasoline - is Paia, once a sugar plantation town and now a roadside refuge of artists, surfers and tourists.
A few miles farther down the highway comes Hookipa, one of the world's leading windsurfing beaches. The Hawaiian word means ``hospitality,'' but amateurs aren't likely to find much of that if they venture into those busy, roiling waters and impede more-experienced athletes.
Soon after milepost 16, the highway changes identity. Its map designation switches to Hawaii 360, the foliage thickens, and the bends in the road become more pronounced and more frequent. In the next 34 miles, state highway officials have counted 90 ``significant'' turns. The speed limits dwindle from 35 mph to 15, even to 10 in one stretch near the Waikamoi Bamboo Forest. Because of heavy rainfall, roadwork is perpetual, and repairs cost $165,000 per mile per year. This is where the driving gets serious.
And tourists evidently do take it seriously. In 1993, the last year for which figures are available, state highway officials counted just 37 accidents on this most tortuous stretch of the highway. Highway officials say the last fatality on the road was in the early hours of May 11, 1993, when a Maui resident careened off a cliff near Keanae.
After many decades of increasing tourism, traffic may actually be down on the highway these days - at least when compared to the roaring '80s. In 1985, the Hawaii Department of Transportation counted an average of 1,915 passing vehicles per 24 hours on the highway. When state crews made the same measurement in 1993, during the worst of Hawaii's tourist drought, the traffic was down to 1,483 vehicles per day.
Between Kaupakalua Road (the cross street where the highway's number changes from 36 to 360) and Keanae lie most of the road's hairpin turns, a good many bridges and roadside attractions beyond counting. The scenery begins with pineapples, sugar cane, a side road to Huelo (where stands Kaulanapueo Church, constructed of coral in 1853) and, on the uphill side of the road, the dense greenery of Koolau Forest Reserve. There are various trails, including a five-minute walk to swimmable Twin Falls on the right side of the first bridge after milepost 2.
At milepost 14, there's Honomanu Bay and a daunting view of the highway as it wriggles across an overgrown cliff face. Two miles beyond that comes Keanae Arboretum, a garden with a milelong trail and dozens of tropical trees and plants, from banana to breadfruit. But I lingered longer a mile from that, on the wind-lashed, tide-bashed Keanae Peninsula.
To get there, I took a well-marked side road and pulled up at the Keanae Congregational Church. An 1860 building with lava walls, plywood floor and crumbling gravestones outside, it includes a visitors register full of local tales. One family came to spread a mother's ashes here. Another man stopped to see where his mother was born and left an address in case anyone around remembered her from childhood.
Eighteen miles to Hana now. More bridges, bends, waterfalls, picnic areas and fruit stands. Just before milepost 19: the Wailua Wayside Lookout and a broad, green view. Just beyond milepost 22: Puaa Kaa State Wayside Park, with a waterfall and natural pool. A few miles farther: Waianapanapa State Park, where a campsite leads to rocky coast and a black sand beach.
And after all this, puny little Hana. The town began in the 19th century as a sugar plantation, sustained by provisions from ships from the Big Island. The center of life (and most livelihoods) these days is the former plantation, now known as the Hana Ranch, and site of a cattle ranch, a riding stable and the Hotel Hana-Maui.
The hotel, a roadside sanctuary of broad lawns, inviting porches and slowly rotating ceiling fans, dates to 1946. The property is owned by a group of Japanese, British and Hawaiian investors, managed by Sheraton, and charges published rates of $325 a night and up.
Another 10 miles down the road (which now takes on the name Piilani Highway) lies Oheo Gulch, better known after decades of hype as the ``Seven Sacred Pools.'' Actually, there are far more than seven pools as the streams splash down to the sea.)
Beyond the pools in Kipahulu, off a dirt road branch from the highway, stands Palapala Hoomau Congregational Church, another 19th century building. But the reason that many visitors come this way is not the building. In the church graveyard, marked by the flat stone, is the final resting place of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, who moved to Kipahulu in 1968 and died here in 1974.
If you have a four-wheel-drive vehicle, there is an opposite direction out of Hana. Instead of retracing your tracks, you can continue past Kipahulu, all the way around the island's eastern end, as the paving dwindles to rocks and dirt, then eventually picks up again. Cattle crossings are frequent.
Avis, Hertz and their brethren order tourists not to take rental cars on this route, and locals warn that certain stretches are often washed out by rain and can remain that way for weeks. But if the Hana Highway alone isn't enough for you, this route allows the brave and the foolish to complete an imperfect circle of the island.
Then again, if the Hana Highway isn't enough for you, perhaps you shouldn't be allowed on the road at all.
by CNB