The Road to Hana

[This is ridiculously long, but I don't know how I could shorten it and give it justice. Pack a lunch.]

Everyone I know who has already been to Maui has told me, "you have to go on the road to Hana." Hey, I don't have to do anything...OK, I went.

So a friend from home came down on Tuesday to hang for a week. I had to work (a lot) so he did stuff on his own. Friday, he was gone most of the day and into the evening. He did the road to Hana. But that's not all. On the road past Hana, right before the state park, is this fruit stand. Robert pulled over and didn't see anything he was interested in, but sitting on a hill behind the stand were two women, one around my age, the other in her 60's. They had 4 teeth between them. Their names are Nani & "Auntie". Robert quickly made friends with them and the next thing he knew he was being given a tour all over the countryside.

They owned 144 acres of land that has been in the family for generations.



So Robert got the tour of a lifetime - which he told me all about when he got back. The next morning he insisted I go with him, back to Hana. Not really for the tour, but to check out the drive, maybe stop by to meet them and go back. The drive itself is supposed to be the attraction. I reluctantly agreed...harumphing (sic?) all the way to the (rented) jeep.

I ended up driving the way there. It was a trip. Sure, I saw what there was to see, but I couldn't pay much attention to it. Once you get on this road, it's 55 miles of 1-and-a-half lanes. And sometimes not even that. It winds, climbs and drops. I know my Ford Focus isn't taking that trip any time soon.

At this point, I'd like to say that I did take some pictures - not when I was driving - but to be honest, I tend to lose interest in taking pictures and pay more attention as to the moment. So I have some, but not nearly enough to give you the real picture of what this drive is like. There is a lot of coast land, but you're usually above it with the most diverse vegetation all around. And it's not diverse all in one spot, it changes as you go. And you're driving on that cliff road which is pretty...uh...focusing.

So, we get to Nani's and there she is...with her boyfriend, Joey. Who looks kind of like a Polynesian Danny DeVito.



Oh...I left out something....

[Tangent Alert]

I told you about the Governor's visit to the school last week. Well, a picture of it made the front page of the Maui News. The main focus was on one of the students, but I'm pretty much in the picture. Or so I'm told, I haven't really seen it yet.

When Robert was there by himself he told him that he was staying with me for the week, that I work at the Charter School, then Nani told him that she saw the article/picture, Robert described me and bang she recognizes me and from the picture and her instinct knows I'm going to do great things here. O....K...

[Back to the story]

So we're hanging out with Nani & Joey. She's trying to recruit me to teach at Hana's school (they have cottages just for the teachers) Nani's "tenant" who lives somewhere on the property shows up for a while. The three of them start smoking a bizarre looking joint. I'll admit, I don't know much about dope, but anything that makes me cough like that...I'd rather have a beer, thank you.

The tenant leaves and we're still talking. The next thing you know, "we" all decide to go on a mini-tour to the ponds. What are the ponds you ask? Part of this land that is hidden away from tourists (mostly, anyway) that the locals pretty much have control over. Because of minerals in the rocks at each, one has a blue glow, one a green glow, the other a black...well, black doesn't glow, but you get the picture.

We pile in the jeep and we're off to the ponds. Now Nani and Joey are cool. They're treating me like I'm family and not a tourist. I'm getting inside info on some of the places around there. (more on that later) They talk like...um...well, kind of like if you meshed Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Don Ho. "Eh, we really got baked last night, Brah!"

After we ran over more mangoes than is eaten in Rochester in a year, and even more potholes, we get to this one little clearing at the side of the "road". There's a truck already parked there. I was told to pull in there. We get out of the jeep and start walking to this tiny trail that is muddy and uphill. Anyone see the movie Anaconda? I'm getting this vibe. We go through some pretty funky forest, but only for about 50 yards and we come to this really cool waterfall that empties into this pond.



We scurried down the trail...or they scurried, I tried to keep my ass from falling down the hill onto the rocks below...and came right to the water. Robert, Nani & Joey start taking off various parts of clothing. They were prepared with relatively normal swimming attire. Then there was me.

Oh...and by the way, we were not alone. There was a guy and his...um...11-year-old daughter there swimming as well - locals.

OK...I'm not going to just sit on these slimy, dirty, pointy rocks and watch other people frolic. So the next thing I know, I'm in my boxers wading into this f-ing cold pond. It's less of a pond and more of a pit because literally after your first step in, the bottom falls out and it goes to about 12 feet deep...which I quickly found out.

Now there are a couple of reasons for my near-death at this moment. One was I had the aerobic capability of a fat guy on Rikki Lake as I haven't been to the gym in months because of my achilles tendon which could explode at any moment (yes, still). The other reason was the fact that my body was revolting for being made to join the Polar Bear Club. Either way, I couldn't suck in air and I was going down fast. After 15 minutes...OK, it was really 30 seconds...I got used to the water. From that point on, it was pretty much one of the most relaxing things I've ever done. We didn't even stay in that long, maybe 20 minutes, but it's been hours and I can still feel the effects. I got to sit under the waterfall - right when you get to it, there's a natural ledge for you to sit on. It was better than any shower massage you'll find at Crap-Mart...right on, brah.

Turns out the guy who was already there, had connections to Nani, even though they didn't recognize each other. After talking and figuring out their connections, they were fast old friends, but everything turned religious quick. There were a lot of praise-god's and I-prayed-for XYZ. It was weird...Nani & Joey turned into...uh...Jeff Spicoli-Faye Baker.

So now I have a bunch of friends in Hana. Nani gave me her number and told me to come any time - I can camp out on her property for a weekend if I want. Robert and I left, tired and relaxed. This is a ridiculously long post so I'll finish it up with the ride back...

Beautiful, but fuzzy. We picked up a poor-little-rich-girl hitchhiker who was so vapid it made my brain smooth ("but dude, she was hot")...stopped at this bar/restaurant to grab a burger and listen to this singer-guitarist who we'll be playing on the new podcast, then home to chill.

The moral of this story is...get your ass to Hana, I guess.

Now, I'm going to try to put pictures in this post, but I've been having problems with it. My theory is that because I'm scrounging a neighbor's bandwidth I don't have enough juice to see them on my laptop, but it should be cool on your computer. If that's not the case and you can't see them, just click here to see the pictures I took, but again, they don't do the ride justice.

Postscript: I know, this is pretty long already, but the following is a list of celebrities - dead &/or alive whose houses we passed in and around Hana:

Ted Turner, George Harrison (2), Kris Kristopherson, Pat Benetar, Jim Nabors, Bill Bixby, Richard Pryor, Woody Harrelson (who I actually literally almost bumped into yesterday at Mana Foods), Brett Favre, and more I'm forgetting. Sounds like the next Bob Hope Christmas Special. Oh, but I forgot the biggest....Oprah. Oprah has bought so much f--ing land in Hana. She hasn't started building on it yet. She insists she will be saving the coastland for Hawaiians. But what she bought, had to be worth in the tens of millions. Pretty soon, they'll be calling it The Road to Oprah.