The ‘Road to Hana’ is essentially a rite of passage for visitors to Maui, snaking 100km (60 miles) through the island’s eastern forests and over its infamous sea cliffs. Built in the 1920’s to connect Hana and Maui’s other remote western communities to the rest of the island, driving the route is an adventure in and of itself. Hana’s remoteness ensures that the village is largely as it was decades ago, a community blessed with simple living and tranquility. But, per Pete’s suggestion, we kept driving east (which, became south as Maui’s geography had it), and reached Kipahulu – the end of the road.
Kipahulu is not a town, but rather a remote corner of Haleakala National Park (the massive volcano at the heart of Maui’s east end) and it served as the perfect spot to make camp at the end of our trip. Upon finding a suitable site, Alex, or “Mowgli” as Jørgen calls him, promptly grabbed his axe and scaled one of the nearby palms, harvesting a few coconuts as part of the evening meal. Despite the inevitably gentle rain from the trade winds every few hours, sleeping under the stars at Kipahulu was perhaps the most memorable evening of the trip – with the crashing of the vast Pacific drowning out the sounds of the night.
Our camp at Kipahulu was the picturesque, remote, and wild image of Hawaii we had been chasing, capping a successful field test and serving as a fitting launch to a summer of adventure ahead.
