Under the Yum Yum (banyan) tree and beyond...

Today's adventure was like no other. But I find myself saying that with each passing day. West Maui was our goal. Lahaina is a great area, the only town on the island with a true "downtown." We had breakfast at the Pioneer Inn, right on the docks where whalers wintered with their boats beginning in the 1840's. In 1874, a banyan tree was planted in the town square. Remember how we mentioned the well-manicured banyan trees of Punchbowl on the island of Oahu? Well, this banyan tree was left to its own devices and grew as it pleased. It is now about 100 yards in diameter. That's the length of a football field! The main trunk is our first picture today. What you might not know about banyans is that they send shoots off their branches to take hold in the soil to provide additional water and nutrients. The single banyon tree in the town square looks like a grove of many trees because so many off-shoots were allowed to take root. It is a VERY happy banyan tree! Here is a very happy tourist too, glad to be in the 82-degree weather of Maui, and next to one of the banyan's many offshoots.

After doing Lahaina, we took off on a trip north past the West Maui resort areas to the very northern-most part of the island, in search of the Maui that is off-limits to most tourists. We have been told that most car rental contracts are voided if you travel on two roads in Maui. One of these roads is route 340 in the northeastern section of West Maui, heading into Central Maui. The other road is in southeast Maui around Haleakala. We checked our car rental contract and could find nothing that said the rental car cops would come find us if we took either road. Larry really didn't care one way or the other, we were on an adventure. The problem with the northern road, I am assuming, is that there is an 8-mile stretch of one-lane, two-way road (it IS paved) dropping off about 300 feet to the Pacific ocean on one side with the other side being a wall of crumbling volcanic rock at a 90-degree angle straight up. Well, that was a challenge, especially when vehicles came at us from the other direction. There were occasional pull-offs which allowed the flow of traffic without a stalemate. The photo above shows the island of Molokai in the distance. (These are unretouched, actual colors.)

Several miles into the paved trail thing, we came to a town isolated from the "real world." This sleepy little hamlet is called Kahakuloa. The only way in and the only way out is the single lane road which you can see meandering to the left and above the church. And you can see how the shoreline and mountains complete the picture of isolation. After two hours to go thirty miles, we got stuck in rush hour traffic

on the way back to our hotel. It was a true adventure today and worth every minute, but I am glad Larry was driving! We were really tired and decided to stay in this evening and ordered room service for dinner. TV was good with the a little of the Winter Olympics.