I Survived the Hana Highway

18 March 2019

We had a goal in mind – find a black sand beach. According to Google, the beach at Waianapanapa was the best, it was next to a lava tube and waterfalls as well. So, merrily unaware of what we were in for, we headed north and up to the Hana Highway.

The started out very nicely. Beautiful weather and a good Highway. We did see an ambulance with lights and sirens but were confused as it was driving very slowly. That continued for quite a ways. We drove through Paia and saw some crazy waves. There was a giant wave warning on that side of the island so we did stop to take a few photos. After that brief break we continued on the highway and finally stopped at Jaws for lunch. They took quite awhile so we thought that there was perhaps only one guy at the grill. We had our lunch then continued on our way. That’s when things took a very bad turn. The road to Hana is a terrible, winding ribbon with many bridges, one lane areas and lots of traffic. In the end 4 of us had Gravol, Kim was white knuckled on the steering wheel and we took several breaks to recover. We finally found the turn off to the lava tube, parked and crawled out of the car.

The Hāna Lava Tube was fantastic! It had lots of colours and textures and we saw it all with flashlights. The colours ranged from white to chocolate. There were stalactites and stalagmites, areas to duck under and lots of drips to shock the unwary. It was a great break from the road! We also saw t-shirts that said ‘I survived the Hana Highway’. If only we had known…

The next stop was the black sand beach. The views were quite fantastic and the black sand was similar to wet coffee grounds. After we took pictures we drove into Hāna in search of dinner. We found a great place with lots of tasty food. Then it was time to carry on to get back to Kihei. We had two options – carry on around the island or go back the way we came. Kim asked the restaurant people and they said, to our horror, to go back the way we had just travelled…in the dark. Actually it was easier to drive back as there was less traffic and we could see oncoming traffic quite easily. Kim drove back to Kihei much more quickly and we all survived the winding road for a second time. We got back and pretty much collapsed into bed.