![]() He threw pieces of cinnamon bun onto the pavement and "voila" they came running out of the foilage for a feed. Apparently the mongoose was introduced to Maui to kill mice and rats but nobody had put it together that mongooses are daytime creatures, whereas rats and mice come out at night, so the idea didn't work. John entertained us by conjuring up some mongooses, as he had earlier promised he would do. It is also a camping area and there are cabins you can rent. We started off to explore the caves, however we got caught in a torrential downpour so we hurried quickly back to the bus. The views here are amazing and there is a black sand beach, ocean caves, easy walking trails, fresh water pools and a blowhole. John has a great sense of humor and betweeen watching the breathtaking scenery and listening to his funny stories, before we knew it we were approaching Hana. We turned off just before the village and went into Waianapanapa State Park. Waianapanapa means "glistening water" in Hawaiian and has much to offer. Shark's Tooth Bay had huge waves that crashed into the rocks, and as we looked out to the ocean we could see the cliff that Steve McQueen jumped off in the movie Papillon, which was partly filmed on Maui. We stopped at the interesting village of Keana'e where there was a school, formerly a prison built to house the prisoners who originally worked on the road to Hana. I know because we never crashed into anyone. Speaking of the 52 one lane bridges, they have a reciprocal yeilding system for taking turns that seems to work very well. We saw proof of this later, at one of the 52 one lane bridges that had recently been restored. As part of the Millenium Legacy a monument was made out of rocks collected from every community along the way, and the communities names were inscribed into the rock. ![]() ![]() John also told us that in the year 2000, President Clinton declared the road to Hana a Millenium Legacy Trail, which means that any repairs or restoration, have to be as originally built. Eventually this became a popular horse riding trail. Fascinating to me was seeing the remains of an ancient 4' wide foot path that used to circle all of Maui, along the shoreline. In those days the wheel hadn't yet been invented, so there were no wheelbarrows or carts. John was like a "driving/talking" encyclopedia as he shared historic tid bits and pointed out various interesting landmarks and vegetation that we would otherwise have missed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |