The day before we left I picked up a couple of books for Jeff to read on the beach at our local used book store. On a whim I threw an old copy of Maui Revealed into my basket as well. We had never used a guidebook before, but I’m so glad we did. It took us off the beaten path to see some remote, breathtaking sites – we will definitely be using guidebooks for our future trips! One caveat – try to pick up an up to date book. Our morning trip to go snorkeling off of La Perouse Bay in an area called the Aquarium and Fish Bowl that were described in our 2008 text were thwarted because the area was now off limits. Oh well. We headed back to the car and decided to explore West Maui instead.

Exploring the lava fields

After lunch at Aloha Mixed Plate in Lahaina, we headed north on Hwy 30 to just before it became the one-lane 340. Following the directions to look for the yellow fence (now painted green) through a pineapple field (now grown over) – we found one of our favorite sites in Maui: The two-tiered pools at Honoloa and we had them all to ourselves.

Hiking down

Overhead shot of the pools – the lower one connects to the ocean, the upper one is filled by crashing waves.

Exploring the pools

We found cool fish!

Loving my Hawaiian themed sunglasses from Target.

These tiny fish liked to jump from pool to pool.

From the pools we headed down the road a little to see the Mushroom Shaped Rock and explore the lava blanketed coastline.

If you showed me this picture and asked me where in the world it might be, I would say Ireland or somewhere like that – not a tropical paradise. It was amazing to see all the diversity Maui had to offer.

Mushroom shaped rock. The red deposits in the lava are from when the island was relatively young.

View to the north and west of the Mushroom Shaped rock

Lava Arch

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring little coves and tide pools in the lava and had the entire hike to ourselves. We almost made it down all the way to the Olivine pools – we could see them and hear people at them, but were cut off by a deep cove.

Since we were so far from Lahaina and on the map it looked closer to take the tiny winding road from Kahaluloa to Kahului, so we kept going in a clock-wise direction around West Maui. The road was very tiny! One lane. For both cars. With a lot of blind turns cut into the cliff side. This would turn out to be a reoccurring theme on the island. {Kahakuloa is marked as large on the map, but in actuality it is a tiny hamlet. A tiny hamlet with delicious banana bread that we bought to support the local church. Bake sale food is the best!}

Our day’s wanderings – no wonder we put some miles on the Rogue