Our flight was scheduled to depart from the Honolulu airport at 9:36 and arrive in Kapalua at 10:17. Sue was up pretty early. I knew that this would be a tense period as she tried to get all of the stuff that she had amassed packed into her luggage and numberless bags.

I put on shorts, a tee shirt, ankle socks, sneakers, and my Smithsonian cap. This would be my dress code until departure time on Friday.

Checkout was easy. We just had to put the towel cards in a box by the elevator. The hotel emailed the receipt to me. We also had no difficulty getting one of Harry's Taxis to transport us to the airport.

The Hawaiian Airlines terminal in Honolulu was divided between the flights to the mainland and the inter-island flights. I thought that all airlines had agreed on a check-in process, but Hawaiian's was different. I found the lines very confusing. Eventually we made our way to a circular island that was used for checking in, including the weighing of luggage. Sue's bag was more than seven pounds (14 percent) too heavy. She wanted to set up camp, extract the excess weight, and distribute it elsewhere. I vetoed this idea. Instead we just shelled out an additional $35 for her luggage. $5 per pound definitely seemed excessive, but I could not argue with the machine.

No establishment near our gate sold food. I therefore backtracked to the restaurant area and located a Burger King. I considered their crossan'wiches a poor substitute for the array of breakfast sandwiches at McDonald's, but at this point I just needed some fuel. I offered to get something for Sue as well, but she declined.

We had a misunderstanding about the plan for food. I had at one time suggested stopping at CJ's (the same establishment that provided our first supper a week earlier) for breakfast and at the same time purchasing sandwiches for the road to Hana. That plan no longer seemed feasible to me. The drive to Hana required three hours even if we made no stops at all. The trip from Kapalua to the beginning of the road to Hana would probably add another hour. We also needed to budget time for getting our luggage, for the shuttle ride to the rental car place, and for packing the car. We were also uncertain about how long it would take to find the cottage that Sue had rented in Hana. It was reportedly off the beaten track, and we had been warned not to try to locate it at night. Finally, we had heard that it was not easy to find food at night in Hana after the food trucks closed, which was at about 3:30.

In short, I thought that we needed to get on the road as quickly as possible and not to dawdle until we were settled in Hana. There would be time for sight-seeing and side trips on the journey back to Lahaina on Sunday. I must not have communicated this conclusion very well.

We did not waste our time in the terminal in Honolulu. Sue texted back and forth with Sonja to verify the details of our sunset cruise on Monday. The boat, a large catamaran, was scheduled to depart from the beach near the Westin. I immediately began to worry about parking, which was always a concern on the islands. Sonja advised us to park at the nearby Whalers Village shopping center, which had a parking garage.

The Honolulu airport had free internet. Sue had located an app from a company named GyPSy[1] that might help us in Maui. We downloaded it to my phone because, of course, hers had no free space. The app accessed the phone's location, and when it approached an interesting place, the narrator provided audible information about it. It only cost $6.

A company named 'Ohana Airlines actually operated our flight to Kapalua. We had to walk out to the plane and climb a small staircase to get inside. The flight was fairly routine, but the pilot warned us that the landing in Kapalua would probably be “firm.” The plane did hit the ground fairly hard, but he was quickly able to bring it to a halt.

We deplaned and entered the terminal, which was about as small as could be imagined. The one on Wings was lavish by comparison. We walked over to the luggage area. From there we could see through the bars on the luggage curtain what was going on near the plane. Flight fuel was going in, and luggage was lifted off of the plane and loaded onto an electric luggage cart — by one strong guy. He then drove the cart to the terminal and placed the bags where we could claim them.

There were no rental car agents in the terminal. As soon as we landed Sue called Budget to tell them that we had arrived. The lady told her that a shuttle would be outside shortly, and it had in fact arrived by the time that we had exited from the terminal. The drive to the rental office shared by Avis and Budget was short.

Sue insisted on being listed as a driver on the rental agreement. The Budget lady asked me if we were married. When I answered in the affirmative, the Budget lady advised me that it was not necessary to specify her. I then asked incredulously whether this was actually an advantage to being married. The Avis lady said that it was, but she assured me that it was the only one.

The car that I rented was a Nissan Rogue. It cost much less than anything else that was available. We soon discovered that a lot of tourists on Maui rented red Mustang convertibles or Jeeps. They must have seemed more adventurous.

Maui basically consists of two mountains. One is very old; the other is even older. The big one is Mt. Haleakala. The other one has deteriorated to the point that it is just called the West Maui Mountains. The roads in Maui basically circumvent the two mountains. It was impossible to drive through either one.

Our plan for the day was to drive to Hana, where a one-room cottage awaited us. Hana was a very small town that was just about as far from where we landed as was possible without access to a boat or plane. The reason for driving to Hana was quite simple. The destination itself was a nothing burger, but a number of interesting attractions were available either at pullovers or a short distance from the road. Many were waterfalls, but there were also some natural pools, a couple of botanical gardens, and other parks. The drive itself was really something to experience — a tropical rain forest along the side of a 10,000-foot mountain. There were 159 bridges, many of them one-lane, and over six hundred turns, many of them very sharp. Some of the views were spectacular.

Our route took us on Highway 30 south from the airport past Lahaina around the tip of West Maui until we reached Highway 380, the road that led to the main airport in Kahului. Near there we turned onto Highway 36, which after Pa'ia became the Hana Highway. The number of this “highway” changed from 36 to 360 but otherwise ran straight (well, not really “straight”) to and even past Hana.

For the first half hour the ocean was on our right, and arid mountain countryside was on our left. It was all quite familiar to us from our previous trip except for Highway 3000, which bypassed Lahaina. The next half hour we drove across the “neck” of Maui. The mountains were on both sides during this stretch, but there was a fairly large plain between them.

The area south of Kahului was much more developed that it had been in 1997. There was no Walmart or Costco in those days, and all, or at least nearly all, roads had only two lanes. In 2018 it resembled a typical suburban sprawl area on the mainland.

At about 12:30 we pulled off the road to get some food out of Sue's stash and to make sure that both cell phones were working. From that spot we could see the beginning of the Road to Hana. A few minutes later we were on it.

The road went through the town of Pa'ia (pah EE ah), which we often heard called a “hippy town.” That seemed like an exaggeration to me. A number of artists lived there, to be sure, and occasionally rather strange persons or things appeared, but it also had some nice little stores. Furthermore, the most famous restaurant on the island, Mama's Fish House, was just north of downtown, which was a real town center.

For the rest of our journey to Hana the ocean was on our left and Mt. Haleakala was on our right.

A little past Mama's was the best surfing location on Maui, and one of the best in the world. It was called Jaws, and it had been in the news the previous week. The waves there topped forty-five feet while we had been in Honolulu. You can check them out here. Be sure to play the video. We were within a mile of that location less than a week after that happened.

The rain forest gradually started to appear a few miles past this point. We had a very good time listening to the GyPSy app. I did not previously know about the EMI project to bring water from the rain forests of east Maui to the desolate but fertile regions of the western side of the island. I especially enjoyed the narrator's relation of the heroic story of Henry P. Baldwin, the man who, more than any other, implemented ditches to channel water from the rain forests to the sugar plantations and mills of the west.

On our trip to Hana in 1997 Sue had done all the driving. This time I took the wheel, and Sue took a few photos of waterfalls that were visible from the road. However, after a few miles of twists and turns, Sue, who occasionally suffered from motion sickness, could not take it any more. We stopped for a few minutes so that she could get some air, and then a little later she insisted on driving the rest of the way. I rode shotgun.

We knew that rain had been predicted for Hana on Saturday, and it started sprinkling[2] about halfway to Hana. If we had had any inclination to stop and gawk, the rain eliminated it. We ignored the narrator's insistence that we should stop for one of his star attractions and just kept pressing on. One of the last things that we drove past was a set of food stands near Nahiku. The narrator on the app sang their praises. We did not have time to stop at that time, but we kept them in mind for the return trip.

By the time that we finally reached Hana, it was raining pretty steadily. I was behind the wheel again, and Sue was navigating. The challenge now was to find the cottage. We had an address for it, but Sue had heard from the owner, Theresa, that it was not right on the highway. Theresa had sent Sue some photos to tell her where to turn, but Sue had not been able to find them on her phone. So, we had to go by the street number, and not all the houses had visible numbers on them.

At this point we were driving south in the rain, and we were not having fun. We overshot the location, turned around, overshot it again, turned around again, and finally found the right dirt road that served as a driveway for several dwellings. We found Theresa's house, which was closer to the highway than the cottage. We would never have found it in the dark.

Sue went in to get the key. Theresa showed her around the place while I stayed dry in the car. Theresa told us to drive the car over to some slabs of flat lava about thirty feet from the door. In fact, a hand-written sign there said “Park.” Sue asked her if it was OK to drive on the grass. Theresa chuckled and replied that this was Hawai'i. You can't kill the grass here.

The cottage was fine for one night. You had to go outside to go to the bathroom, but in this climate that was barely a concern. We brought our stuff into the cottage, and then we decided to go out and get some food. Theresa had said that the food at the Hana Ranch was pretty good. This was different from the guide book's opinion, but it did say that it was much improved.

The television was in the white cabinet.

The bathroom was on the other side of the kitchen area, ...

... which had a mini-fridge and plenty of utensils that we never used.

We drove into Hana proper and easily located the Hana Ranch restaurant on the right side of the highway. I asked for a burger and a beer, which was probably a good choice here. They did not put a lot of stuff on the burger, and that was fine with me. I like to be able to taste the hamburger. The place was not very crowded, which was a pleasant change from Waikiki. Both Sue and I enjoyed the food and the relaxing atmosphere.

After supper I walked up the hill to the ranch's store, where I bought some chips and Diet Coke. I should have bought a little coffee, too, but I did not discover that the cottage had coffee-making equipment until Sunday morning.

Upon our return to the cottage, Sue watched some comedians on Netflix on the television set. I downloaded my photos to my laptop, Yoga. I planned on taking a lot of photos in the next few days. I also did a few online Sudokus. I liked the format, but I needed to devise a way to return to a previous setting when I discovered a mistake.

Later Sue and I decided to bid the hands in “The Bidding Box” in the October Bridge Bulletin. She was West, and I was East. Sue, who was extremely tired, made a record of all eight of her bids, put she passed out from exhaustion just as we finished grading our performance on the fourth hand. We had actually done pretty well at that point.

Sleeping in the cottage was an interesting experience. Animal noises were pretty common throughout the night. The myna birds were very noisy, and in the morning the moas[3] could not stop crowing. One would think that they had never seen the sun before.

There was no chance of an encounter with a lion, leopard, or hippo, but the experience was still reminiscent of nights in the camps in Tanzania. It was a nice way to start our week in Maui.

Sue arose to go to the bathroom once during the night. She reported that an insect of some sort had taken up residence at the base of the toilet there. She took a photo of him and posted it on her Facebook page.

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