Day 10. Maui.

The flight from Kaua’i to Maui was uneventful. After retrieving the rental car we had lunch at Da Kitchen in Kahului. The food and service were good and the prices reasonable. I just learned that Da Kitchen used to have a restaurant in San Diego but it is out of business… bummer. After making a quick trip to Kihei (on the west coast) to pick up snorkel gear we headed for Hana, where we will camp for the next two nights. To get to Hana we took the southwestern route. This route travels through a lot of lava fields and did not appear to be heavily traveled. Part of the reason, as we found out later, was that travelers going out of Hana had been told the road was closed due to flash flooding this afternoon. We did drive through some water running over the road at one point, but had no trouble (it helped seeing a convertible fording the stream before us). As we approached Hana the vegetation became more and more lush until we were in a full-on tropical rain forest. By this time it was raining heavily so we took note of places to go back to tomorrow and headed for Wai’anapanapa State Park, where we would camp. It was not raining when we got to the campground, so we set up the tent and headed into town to get some supplies and find some supper. There are basically two choices in Hana for dining: the super expensive Hotel Hana Maui or the expensive Hana Ranch House. We chose the Ranch House and were very happy with the food. After supper we headed back to the campground and the night passed with no rain.

Pictures from today can be found here.