Well, my friend Jason Azbill moved in with me this week. It's been pretty fun so far.
We decided to spend a Saturday driving to Hana. For those of you who don't know, Hana is on the other side of the island from me. There are a lot of myths about the roads. I have heard that it violates your rental agreement to go there because of the roads. I've heard you can drive there, but you have to take the same road back (instead of circling the mountain) because the rest of the road is un-drivable. There are other "myths" as well. I just remember doing the drive when I was here with my family and it wasn't that bad.
Jason and I decided to take the most difficult route possible because I still have a rental car to beat up. We decided to drive down the Western coast and to circle the mountain in a counter-clockwise direction. Some maps (like the one above) show a dotted line road from the coastal area connecting to the road around the mountain.
We drove down the coast. When we got to the end of the road we went off-road for a while. After about half an hour we finally got to a hill that the car couldn't get up (it's not even 4-wheel drive). Finally, we accepted the fact that we would have to use regular roads. Back-tracking took another hour or so. Counter-clockwise from the North coast around seemed the best course.
The drive was great. It is on the rain forest side of the island, cut into cliffs. For pictures see:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Dave.G.Burke/DriveToHana . During the drive, we discovered that there was a relay race from the valley to Hana. It was a pretty crazy sight to see. We were in the jungle with pouring rain. We passed a runner every minute or so. Plus, each team had a support van driving on the road, stopping, dropping off people and picking others up. It seemed fun though.
Hana was a nice town. If I could get a job working online, Hana is where I would like to live. The countryside is so beautiful.
After some time in Hana we decided to continue our loop. We drove south and west for another hour or so. I included some pictures of a waterfall that was on the way. Eventually we came to a bridge, and it was CLOSED! There had been no signs beforehand to let us know. We ended up having to drive back out on the same road which we had used coming in. That detour cost us another 3 hours or so.
On the way back I stopped at a fruit stand to ask about the bridge. The hippies there said it has been closed since November. My coworkers told me that there had been an earthquake in that same month. They said that the bridge was probably fine (it looked fine), but the government closed it instead of checking it or taking chances on it. Isn't that crazy? But I'm finding that that's Hawaii.
