Red Sand Beach

(I was able to re-upload pictures from past blog entries, so you can scroll down and check em out. Gonna try to continue where I left off here....)

Before leaving Hana I wanted to do one more thing to do: Find (and swim in) the elusive Red Sand Beach. To get there we had to bushwhack past an old Japanese cemetery and hike along the backside of Ka'uiki Head on a narrow sliding cinder rock trail. A local guy was heading there as well so we asked him to lead the way. Once we turned the corner there was a stunning view of the inside of the cinder cone, collapsed and eroded by waves to create a private red sand cove. There were only 2 other guys there plus our trail guide and it was apparent that if you wanted to fit in, it wasn't about what kind of clothes you were wearing... At 10:00am we were already sweatin', so I took a (skinny) dip to cool off. Ahhhhhh! Nothing beats refreshing Hawaiian ocean covering every inch of your skin in the morning.
Visited an orchid and exotic plant farm (major tourist trap; they only let you run around for 4 minutes to smell the orchids, then they take you down to their gift shop! poor tourists...)
and then Kahanu Garden and Pi'ilanihale Heiau (sacred Hawaiian temple) - the largest in the state. Built with hand-placed lava rock, no concrete, this heiau is the size of two football fields. I could only fit half of it in the frame. The Garden had various native Hawaiian food and medicinal plants like taro, banana, sweet potato, awa, noni, as we all very large spiders! (sorry 'bout all the gross close-up bug stuff - but it's my blog and I can post what I want to! :)

Drove down the lush Nahiku Road to the coast and observed some clueless tourists taking photos of each other on very treacherous wave-splashed rocks. As we were driving away, I noticed one of the girls was juggling something which I thought was an avocado at first, but after my eyes zeroed in on it, I felt this furious Hawaiian pride well up inside me and in my best gandalf-you-shall-not-pass! voice I boomed out of my car window to her, "You can't take that rock with you. I'm serious. You can't remove rocks from Hawaii. Go put it back." I didn't explain why but was satisfied when I saw her take the fist-sized smooth rock back to the ocean. It is a fact that tourists who have taken pieces of Pele home with them fall deathly ill with her curse until they mail the rock back to Hawaii.

Checked out windsurfers flying across the water and surfers gliding by in the foreground from Ho'okipa Lookout. Maui is the windsurfing capital of the world and this is definitely where the action is.