Today the plan is to do some snorkelling and explore the West Maui loop by car. After breakfast we get all our gear together and headed off to Napili Bay. It’s still fairly early in the day, but parking is at a premium at this popular spot. We score a place fairly close to the beach and walk over to one end where there is a promising looking area for snorkelling.
We stake out spot near this Castle builder, and snorkel along the shoreline behind him out to a point, and around the corner a bit. Lots of great fish and coral. Where is that underwater camera anyway?
We wrap up the snorkelling and head of on the Kahekili Hwy to explore the rugged West Maui coast line. Within minutes, we’re in a very rural area following the coast line which is now mainly steep cliffs with some pretty impressive wave action on the shore.
We stop at several totally unmarked locations, except for a tip in the guide book, and walk a few minutes to see some spectacular shoreline formations. It looks like you could hike for days along the shore on a network of informal looking trails. I find the lava formations along the shore fascinating and left to my own devices probably would have spent he whole day hiking around the ocean’s edge exploring all the pools and taking more that the 400+ pictures I ended up taking today.
This sideways blow hole for instance! It’s about 30-40′ high and when the waves hit the shore just right it forces the water up a tube in the lava squirting it skyward in quite a spectacular fashion.
But there is more to see, so I pry myself away from this location and we drive on. the road gets narrower and rougher as we progress and then we’re climbing up to a high point for this view, and stop here to get a fruit smoothy from quite a colourful roadside vendor. Next stop is the Kaukini Gallery an impressive art gallery for such a seemingly remote area. We purchase a couple of items to remember the trip by and push on.
A few more miles down the road we come across this road side attractions. While Manitoba has it’s share of larger that life roadside attractions and other assorted oddities, it seems that Maui is not immune to this phenomenon either. Although in this case, it seems like life size is possible and it’s quite beautiful
After completing the loop, we’re back in Kehei to pick up some dinner from our gluten free restaurant discovery and hustle across the road to catch our 1st Maui sunset since we’ve arrived. A picture postcard end to a great day.
Another 30 minutes and we’re back at the condo enjoying dinner. Pictures of the day.