Today was a very busy and tiring day. Our guide Kea from Holo Holo Maui Tours picked us up at 6:30am for a full-day tour of East Maui (their “Bamboo Forest Trek”), which includes a four-mile hike in the Kīpahulu District of Hāleakela National Park as well as a more-than-100-mile drive of the entire Road to Hana, the “back side” (where rental car companies don’t want you to go), and Upcountry.

Being picked up so early gave us the chance to see sunrise from the lanai at our AirBnB.

Kea picked us up right on time and we got into a nice Ford Bronco for our tour. Our AirBnB is just off the Road to Hana (Mile Marker 3, roughly) and I thought we’d go directly to Hana. I was wrong. Kea told us that we’d be doing the loop in reverse so we could do our hike before it got too hot…and off we went, starting with a drive through Upcountry Maui. There weren’t many stops during that part of the tour, but that was OK; it was largely familiar territory to us, and I didn’t take any photos there.

The map below shows the rough path we took after leaving Upcountry, beginning near Makena towards the bottom of the map.

From Upcountry, we drove along the Back Side for a couple of hours until we reached the entrance to the park.

There were a few hikes to choose from in this part of the park. We did the Bamboo Forest Trail up Pipiwau Stream to Waimoku Falls and back; it took us nearly two hours to hike up; the hike back was 40 minutes shorter (and had many fewer stops for pictures).

After we finished the hike, we drove the rest of the Back Side to Hana, where we stopped to pick up lunch and make an emergency sunglass repair at the famous Hasegawa General Store (they didn’t have an eyeglass repair kit to sell us, but they had the right screwdriver to tighten up the glasses…for free!).

We were finally on the famous Road to Hana (the “Front Side”). Our next stop was Waianapanapa State Park to eat our lunch and visit the famous Honokalani Black Sand Beach. We could have swum there, but we were too tired!

Our next stop was Hana Farms to enjoy the scenery and pick up some pineapple banana bread for tomorrow.

We still had two hours and lots of beautiful scenery left our our tour. There was even another swimming opportunity – we stayed dry.

In the end, we had a 12-hour tour with Kea – and it was a great day out. I’m glad I didn’t try to drive the Road to Hana myself – not that the driving seemed that terrifying, but rather that I was able to see and absorb the scenery instead of watching the road. We probably wouldn’t have done the Bamboo Forest hike on our own, and we definitely wouldn’t have learned as much about East Maui as we did today.

We left the Westin about 11am and had several hours before we needed (or wanted!) to be at Lihue airport for our flight to Maui. We spent most of that time in Kapa’a.

We began with a stroll north along the coastal path from Kapa’a Beach Park. There are houses next to the path, and one of them had some spectacular hibiscuses (hibisci?) mere feet away from the path.

It was cloudy with occasional rain; the path was pretty empty and nobody was out on the beach, but there were people fishing in the bay.

We walked about a mile, stopping at a shelter a bit short of the Kapa’a Lookout. There was a sign on the path there saying that it was one of the rare locations where you might see a Hawaiian monk seal, and they were right!

It was lunchtime, so I pulled out my iPhone and asked Yelp for advice. The highest-rated restaurant in the area was a food truck: Tony’s Catch.

Yelpers sang the praises of everything on the menu, especially the ahi tostadas. I followed their advice and was delighted (Diane had the fish tacos with mahi-mahi and was equally pleased). The only thing I didn’t like was their choice of drinks – Coke products, which I could get anywhere. Fortunately, the adjacent food truck had Aloha tropical drinks (with 4% fruit juice!). While I was getting the drinks, one of the local moochers tried to get a bite of my ahi – Diane kept it safe for me.

We walked a bit more, then drove to the airport and had a fine flight to Maui if you ignore the surprise go-around just before our first attempt at landing (we were in an exit row, and I did wonder if we were going to have to work for our legroom!).

We drove to our AirBnB in Haiku (very nice!), dropped off our stuff, and went out in search of dinner…and Yelp failed us. It claimed that the closest restaurant (the cafe at the Jaws Country Store) was open until 9, but they’ve changed their hours and had closed an hour ago. The store was still open and the clerk was kind enough to point us to a cluster of restaurants and food trucks in Haiku Town proper (about three miles from the AirBnB), and that worked fine.

Tomorrow, we take the Road to Hana! Our guide will pick us up at 6:30am, so tonight must be an early night.