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THE FAMOUS DRIVE

    There has been so much said about this drive to Hana on other pages that I'll avoid repeating those facts.  Enough to state that we drove ourselves, rather than signing on for a tour bus.  There are advantages to both methods. And we knew people from both the Pro tours and Anti tours side of the issue.
    Anti: "You have no control.  They'll make stops but probably at places run by their nearest relative."
    Pro: "You can lean back and enjoy."
    Anti: "You can't stop at will. Except their will."
    Pro: "Leave the driving to them and take in the sites.
    Anti: "You'll see what you want to see, not what they want you to see."
    Pro: "You'll miss a lot of important things--and the running lecture."

    They were both, of course, right!
    On the other hand, doing it alone you are in control.
    The tour? Well, that something like 55 miles of winding, twisting road, with around 600 curves and about 50 bridges--though I don't remember all that many of either.  But who is counting?  Not me.  I had better things to do.
    Hana was, according to many advisors, simply a little ol' Hawaiian town of minor interest.  Everybody said it was the drive to Hana that really counted.  It was what you saw along the way.
    Like the Seven Sacred Pools. Which weren't really seven, but somebody had thought that sounded nice and commercial.
    Then there was:
    Charles Lindbergh's grave.  A stop many people went out of their way to make.
    Waianapanapa State Park!  And pack a lunch to eat there on its Black Beach.
    The town of Paia.  The "gateway" to your Drive to Hana!

    Regardless of its lack of flashy touristy attractions, Hana has several nice places to stay over night.  It is possible to take in the surrounding natural beauty which hasn't--yet--been distorted into a modern resort for mainland big spenders.  I'm sorry to say that I didn't get any pictures of Hana itself, nor did we actually stop there in town, but whipped right through--Brigitte was never even aware that we'd seen it; guess she blinked a lot, for the drive had been very very long. (Maybe the tour bus would have stopped there--but you can't have everything.)
     We missed caves and we missed a lot of beaches, and we missed Charles' grave--not willing to go the extra mile or so to the church where he was buried.
    We stopped at the Seven Pools and then turned around and went home.
    Enough  was enough, after all!

    But, in the very beginning, the Gateway to our Drive to Hana:

    We thought these roots were rather fascinating.  So I took a few pictures of their gnarled tangle, at Brigitte's suggestion.
    How like arms reaching up through the  ground, fingers stretching out to snap up around some unsuspecting human ankle, wrap around a struggling leg, drawing you into...
    Hey, this isn't some horror story.  We'd left that behind us in our West Maui drive.
    In any case, the roots seemed to be tangled throughout this section of the forest, which greedily stretched up the moutainside--that was, in reality, the outer wall of the ancient volcano that had fashioned all that was of this part of the island.
    We wondered what kind of trees these were.  I supposed a tours guide could have told us--assuming they made this stop.  A point on the Pro-tour side.
    But I still didn't think being escorted through this lovely wilderness was my concept of an ideal drive to Hana.
    We were in control!
    Here we were, able to spend hours surrounded by these marvelous trees.  We could examine them for as long as we wished.  Really study these mysterious roots and wonder, why oh why oh Maui did they exist in such a massive, tangled web.
    This was, of course, just one of many stops on our day's adventure.
    So much to see, so little time.
    So instead of staying the whole morning long and investigating this wonderful forest, and  resolve the mystery of the tangled roots, we quickly walked for a few minutes, snapped these pictures and were on our way to new places, new sites, new wonders on Hana's road.