Highway to heaven

Ok, this will be hard. My tablet is kaputt, so I am writing this with my mobile. So here is the short version of a very long day.

It rained all day, but I didn‘t care, because the sound of the ocean was louder through the opened balcony doors. When I was finished with my breakfast, I went to see some of the Hana sights. The first one was the waterfront area. The second was the beautiful Red Sand Beach. To get there it is a wee hike along the coast. Because all my shoes were wet, I was stuck with my hiking boots which turned out To be perfect. Due to the heavy rainfall, the clay-y ground was slippery. I went along the most beautiful coastline to get to the beach. It is perfect to splash around a little, because the heavy waves are smoothened by a wall of stones. The sand was super soft between my toes. After half an hour sitting at the beach, I got back to the car, because I had a plan for the day and not much time to „lose“.

I wanted to give Haleakela another chance. So I drove all the way from Hana up to the summit of Haleakela, meaning three hours of mostly winding road. I thought about when Sonja and I spent ten days on La Gomera. After a couple of days with trips to little villages and hikes in the mountains, we had to cut down on those trips, because to get anywhere else, we had to take the winding roads up to the peak of the island and then down again. That was a lot of headaches and troubled stomaches.

Driving up to the summit was excactly like the last time. It was raining hard and the greyish fog made it hard to see the car in front of me. When I arrived, it started to hail. But at least this time I was able to see the telescope up there.

The sun came out, when I stopped at the visitor center, so I checked the lookout into the crater and it couldn‘t have been any better. So I took my jacket and fleece out of the car and began my hike down the sliding sand trail. I was only allowed a two hour trip, because I wanted to be back before sunset. The weather changed somewhere in between and even the light icy fog disappeared after half an hour which gave me an incredible view.

I drove back to Kahului and the sun set, when I was still above and inside the clouds. It really was the right choice to go up there again.

I spent my night at another hostel in Wailuku and had an incredibly delicious hawaiian dinner right next door. My flight to the Big Island was at 10 a.m. the next morning.

happy I am wearing these

Red Sand Beach

Red Sand Beach

Beach in Hana

at second visitor center

inside the crater

trail

trail

on the way down