Monday we drove to Hana. 613 turns one way, 56 one-way bridges en route, and jaws hitting the floor every curve as more rich rainforest was revealed to us. Bamboo Forests intermingle with Swamp Mahogany, Rainbow Eucalyptus, and Cook Pines.  Ferns of all sizes line the dripping lavarock, vines wrap treetrunks and hang down, tarzan-style from the branches. The tips of many trees have crowns of little red flowers. Deep valleys, quaint villages, and waterfalls of all sizes. We did a few hikes along the way to waterfalls. At Three Bears Falls we clambered down the side of the bridge and through thick palm forest to get right down to the pool and the idyllic falls.  We followed a hunters trail through EMI Land (the irrigation company that owns most of the land and sucks water from the waterfall sources to feed the gaping sugar industry’s endless thirst. We ended up at a crystalline pool and a large, secluded, perfect waterfall in a lushly green, deep valley. Then back on the road (it’s a four-hour drive to hana) and onwards. There’s a little shrine in a tiny lava tube, a white supplicant praying to the benevolent virgin. She is covered in fresh leis. There’s more than I can describe, more biodiversity, more tiny towns, more beauty and more flowers, more waterfalls and more crazy locals driving at high speed along the twists of the Hana Highway.

At Hana we paid 25$ and went into the lava tubes. Inside the volcano these are the passageways the lava took out to the ocean. It looks like the skin of Jabba the Hut, moistly glistening in our flashlight’s beam. It also looks like molten chocolate, truffle mix in any number of formations. Like one of those old commercials for Hersheys that shows the smooth chocolate pouring down in an endless stream. There’s hersheys kisses on the ceiling, hundreds of stalactites. And a tiny room affectionately called the Claustrophobia Chamber that we did not go into. An adventure like no other. Absolutely worth it.

Back on the highway to the tourist centre, the 7 Sacred Pools. Full of bleating tourists desperate to swim in a natural pool, we were turned off by the sheer numbers congregated around the pools and rushed back to the car. Then the stomach churning drive home in time to help cook the rehearsal dinner. We had seen so much beauty, and the same places from a different angle showed even more to us. Nothing could ruin this.

Did I mention that every morning here in Pa’ia, two sea turtles feed in the surf by the shore? They peek up to grab some air and then dive back down, tails in the air, to eat the seaweed attached to the rocks. I look at them every morning and drink my coffee.

To escape the superbowl we drove out of Pa’Ia and once again across the waving green hands of the sugar-planted valley. This time to find a beach and snorkelling. Our guidebook describes Mile 14 as a veritable waste of time, a murky wasteland of dead coral and over-fed fish. We found it much different. Shallow water so placid we kept thinking we were on a lake and not the ocean, with coral at waist-deep, fish just a bit further out.

Learning to breathe only through my mouth and float with relaxed body, not to panic as water engulfed my head, I was also lost in something beautiful and unusual: the living ocean. Schools of fish, bright iridescent parrotfish and fish with bright stripes, dull fish hidden in the coral, fish and more fish and it seemed every two seconds came another distraction from the sheer miracle of breathing inside the water. There were towns down there, bustling villages of creatures going about their daily business without a thought for us pasty air-breathers.

That evening social drama took over in the house, the us- and them-ness of two families uniting. However the children played in the pool and giggled and laughed and swam and dove into the water with a plethora of pool toys.

Friday B& J went to the doctor, dan and I hung out at the house . When we got back, all packed in the car for a short drive to Malauka Beach, to sit in the wind and surf and play, soak in the sun and smile. A wedding was performed on the beach, the bride and groom in too-nice-for-the-beach clothes put fluffy leis about each others’ necks and a man played the conch. In the bushes, just out of sight, stood a second princess bride waiting her turn to marry her own anxious groom on the windy shore.

In the afternoon, played in the pool for a long time.

Saturday was checkout day, out of kihei and beyond. We drove up to lahaina, a congested, quaint town with old plantation architecture and almost no parking anywhere. Our goal was to look at a few neat historical sites but it was so impossible to find any parking at all we glanced at two and then hit the road. We visited the old lahaina prison, with mortared walls constructed of giant pieces of coral, and a tiny bleak wood frame building which housed the 8 prisoners they could have at any given time. Offenses included giving birth to bastard children, refusing to work on the road, and generally disturbing the peace.

We also visited a missionary house with this beautiful auxiliary building called the Master’s Reading Room (Now a gift shop and art gallery) built entirely of coral and lavarock mortared together. But overall Lahaina was claustrophobic, its lovely plantation buildings too infested with timeshare salesmen and tacky gift shops to really enjoy it there.

We meandered down to Ma’alea harbour and had one of the best meals yet at Buzz’s Wharf, a fish- and steak- house that does good burgers and kids meals. And then we boarded a small Pacific Whale Foundation biodiesel powered boat to go whale watching.

What can I say about the whales? Huge and graceful, mysterious ancient creatures floating in timespace inconceivable to us. We flatter ourselves to think they are saying hello with their disappearing tails and steamy spray, gasp and run to the side of the boat yelling “2 o’clock, there!!!!” and everyone snaps their cameras and sighs with disappointment at only getting the final tip of his tail. They lowered the microphone into the water and we floated in engine silence, listening to the whales and visualizing them hanging upside down in the deep ocean. Their tails pointed to the sky, their noses to the ocean floor, singing incomprehensible music to each other. It’s the males, calling to each other on the great mating journey through the hawaiian islands.

We drove to Pa’ia after that to meet everyone else at the new house and be in the heavy soap opera that would be the wedding party. We are on Maui time and they just got off the plane.

Today we went on the opposite hike of yesterday. We got it into our heads we would do a local hike in South Maui, and so we headed down south to LaPerouse Bay.  We drove at moonset, the golden disk of full moon slowly sinking below the horizon as we headed south. You drive all the way down to the end of the road and look for this incredible tropical mansion hidden in trees. You know you’re there because there are a LOT of “NO” signs. Like “no trespassing”, “no fires”, “no Parking”. We found somewhere to park and first went down the north side of the estate, along their barbed wire fence and past the signs that say “warning, no trails marked”, through a lichen-covered mesquite forest until we hit lava. We explored lava for about an hour, going along the coast from little protected cove to cove, looking in water and seeing the tropical fish you always see at the aquarium. Except these fish hadn’t gone crazy from being watched all the time. You didn’t even need to snorkel, you could just sit and watch from the lava and moorish idols and pipefish and a bunch of yellow ones I don’t know the name of all show up, swimming around like they’re just heading out to work or something.

But this, though pleasant, was not what we were looking for. Our goal was the other side of LaPerouse Bay, and the really big lava fields created in the eruption of Haleakala in 1790. These you get to by first walking onto lava rock through an archaeological site that is marked with a new set of “No” signs regarding not sitting on the rock structures or moving stone piles or removing artefacts. The ancient people lived on this. And built thatch-roofed homes, stacking lavarock into walls, and there are the remains of these homes on the lavafield. From afar, it looks like deeply fertile soil. But the closer you get the more you taste desolation. It’s made up of fist- and head-sized chunks of lavarock, a gigantic and seemingly endless quarry that stretches for a few miles.

There is a brief reprieve as you go along the shore and under more mesquite trees and along the Makena Ranch lands, who warn us not to start fires.  We passed a surfer’s grave, two crosses on little rock mounds, covered in shell necklaces. They buried the surfboard behind one of the graves, its top third sticking out of the ground behind the cross.

Past the graves, you get in the real lava field, a fluid black shape pooling by the ocean, made entirely of boulders, rocks, and lava pebbles. This land stretches too far for the mind to manage, and every step wobbles as lava shifts under your feet. The heat and humidity of this tropical desert, with no wind and no end in sight, ankles shaking in their sockets with every carefully placed footstep, we put our heads down and hiked the oddly named “King’s Highway”, piled over 14 years around 1840 to create an access… to what, I don’t know. We couldn’t look up often because of the instability of the ground. And when we did, lavarock formations played tricks with our eyes. I thought I saw birds, people, and animals in the outcroppings.  We thought we saw a little trail heading towards the ocean, but doubted ourselves after another hour in the lava field. 15 minutes of hard slogging later we turned back and decided to follow the ‘path’.

Actually, there were markers all along the way. Larger and less wobbly pieces of lava in some parts gave my sore, aching ankles a brief reprieve.  We were like Hansel and Gretel, following brilliant white pieces of coral that seemed to glow against the red-black lava boulders, a sign the ocean was not far away.

At the ocean hikers and snorkellers had made marks, the ubiquitous rock piles (these ones were alternating, coral-lava-coral-lava), to show people had been here. We saw a couple, first humans we’d seen in hours, struggling along the lava. They’d chosen to pick their own way and it looked even more difficult than the one we’d taken.

We brought coral back with us to better mark the path and put a big piece of white coral-rock at the trail entrance so people would know.  Then we hiked back.

It was like Mordor, or some dragon-burnt land, or coming from the pit of Tartarus or even narrowly escaping a kind of hell. People lived here, walked on this sharp unevenness, fished off the coastline and survived against all odds, in this a landscape that forgives nothing. We were so glad to get out.

For the rest of the day we recovered from the lava fields’ physical, mental, and emotional trauma. My ankles haven’t recovered, especially from this one piece of lava that I stepped on not realizing it would lever hard and bash into my ankle. I’ll have a nice bruise tomorrow, methinks.  But, we napped, played with the kids, took them to the park and then to the pool and suntanning.  And for sheer catharsis, this rates as an A+++ day.

I never did mention this but every night the geriatric residents of Hale Kamaole come out onto the lawn and blow the conch in each of the four directions at the moment the sun disappears, then hug and cheer and shake hands and congratulate each other.