Ok, I’m finally going to post something…
Kara and I took our first trip off of Maui over Labor Day weekend. We got up on Saturday morning and drove to Lahaina, and took a 40 minute ferry ride over to Lana’i. As we pulled in to Manele Harbor, we saw 20-30 dolphins swimming along side our boat!
We rented a Jeep while we were there because we had heard that there were lots of 4x4 trails. The first day we were there, we drove out to Garden of the Gods and Polihua Beach. Garden of the Gods is a barren part of the island where there are many volcanic rocks scattered about. We passed through the garden on the red dirt road and continued on to Polihua. When we got to the beach, there was not even one other person on the beach! Unfortunately you can’t swim at that beach because the current between Lana’i and Molokai is too strong! So, we walked way down on our own private beach and enjoyed the sights.
The second day we did more off-roading, this time to Shipwreck Beach. Once we got to the end of the trail, we hopped out and started hiking. There is a WWII ship that was purposely sunk off shore, and we wanted to get closer for a better look. There wasn’t much of a trail so we just pushed through bushes and climbed up rocks. At one point we noticed a group of axis deer (including some fawns) up the hill from us. After a while we decided to turn back, but we had some trouble finding our path! We were down in this gully and we just kept walking up and down trying to find the spot through the keave trees that we originally came through. Eventually we found it, and made our way back to the jeep.
After Shipwreck Beach, we bounced, slid, and banged our way down to the other end of the dirt road. The map said that it should have taken us two hours to make it to the end, but we made it in 50 minutes! I think it’s safe to admit that I was driving faster and more reckless than the person that made the 2 hour estimate! Kara took this great video of us bombing down the trail… I’ll post it once I get it off the broken laptop.
Our third day was spent hanging out at the Four Seasons Manele Bay Resort pool. We ran into some people on the island that we kind of knew, and they invited us to hang out at the pool. It was a nice relaxing end to our three day romp around the island!
