We had two days on Maui and no excursions booked. Another couple we had met, Peter and Lesley, had decided to hire a car for 24 hours and we agreed to share the costs. Maui is not a very big island but has two distinct halves pinched in the middle to give it a lopsided hourglass shape. The ship was moored on the western side of the island so we set off to the east side to explore Haleakala, the world's largest dormant volcano crater rising 10,023 feet above sea level. If you count its height from the ocean floor to the peak it is higher than Mount Everest. The crater is 3,000 feet deep and 21 miles around and is so barren and moon like it was used by NASA to train the Apollo astronauts in the 1960's.
The drive, although not very long in distance takes over 2 hours as it climbs quickly from sea level via a series of huge sweeping hairpin bends. Almost every corner was an OOH AAH moment and we stopped many times to take photos as the journey kept revealling amazing sights. One of the photos below shows a cloud bank that looked just like a waterfall.
When we got near the top we were above the clouds and the temperature had dropped considerably. The thinning air was quite noticable as we walked a short distance to a look out to catch our first glimpse of the inside of the crater. Utterly amazing as the photo below shows. Barren, windswept cinder cones that look that they have just been desposited but are hundreds of years old.
There is an observatory at the top of the mountain which is supposed to have one of the best views of the night sky in the world. As we walked around, speechless with the beauty, people started to arrive, planning to watch the sunset. As we were only dressed in shorts and light tops we decided not to stay for the sunset as the temperature was continuing to drop. This volcano records the lowests temperatures in Hawaii, often dropping to below freezing at sunset. So we drove back to town, still overwhelmed by the sights we had seen.
The following day we spent walking through the town of Lahaina chatting the friendly locals and swimming in the clean warm water. We thoroughly enjoyed Maui and would love to go back.
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| Inside Haleakala Crater |
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| Map of Maui |
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| Cloud bank below the road |
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| Silver spears, a rare plant that only grows on Haleakala |
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| Gorgeous Beach on Maui |
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