Maui has this crazy road. And I must admit, that road was my favorite part of the whole trip, because I wanted to see some real jungle full of waterfalls… and believe me, I got my wish.
I already told you about the car we rented after landing on Maui. And I told you we stopped at a store and I met that cool old guy who was in the 82nd Airborne and dropped behind Nazi lines the night before the D-day landings. After that, we hit the road to Hana.
Here is a map of the North side of the island… the wet side…
On that map, the road between the airport and Hana looks pretty tame, doesn’t it? Here is what it looks like from the air, thanks to good old Google images…
Now you would think that just driving on a narrow, twisting road in rain showers in an unfamiliar car, often perched on the side of a cliff hundreds of feet above the ocean, would be exciting enough, right?
But what really sets the road to Hana apart is the fact that every few hundred yards, you get to these narrow, one-lane bridges…
You need to stop and let traffic coming the other direction go unless you get there first. The thing is… (we all knew there was a going to be at least one thing)… that it takes a while to get the hang of where and when to stop, so a lot of the other tourists, not being as smart as my wife and I, kept getting it wrong. I can’t tell you how many times people had to back up, or how many near-misses there were. The other thing is… (yay, two things in the same post)… that locals don’t care about the signs… because they own the road, so to speak. It is some crazy driving. Having a monster-vomit-green Mustang was actually quite useful… just because it made us very visible.
That picture above, also from Google images, makes it look like the bridges are all fairly new and in good shape. They weren’t… they mostly looked like this…
Once again, just so you know, that is not one of my pictures… these are all stock pictures… we will get to mine later today… and I have a lot of them… but these bridges were crumbling and old and very slippery.
Later on, we discovered that there is an entire industry on Maui devoted to selling t-shirts to people who made this drive…
We didn’t get the shirts, but maybe we should order some…
Or maybe I should write another children’s book with some new, original paintings…
Pouring My Art Out 
aah you made me smile so many times with these posts. 🙂 i really needed that today, so thank you. love your pics and the drawing! love the way you write, so free.
you are too kind, but I am glad if it cheers you up.
Very brave of you and your wife! Glad you survived to tell us about it. 🙂
While we were doing it, it just seemed fun and a little adventurous… but there were a lot of crosses on the sides of the road… with flowers by them…
creepy, reminds me driving up a mountain in Australia and looking over the side. Just gave myself shivers
not everyone likes that kind of driving
I’m just a passenger, so am at the peril of the driver. I should probably not keep changing the radio station and pissing them off then
do not piss off the driver
That is an amazing road.Love it! I drove tractor-trailer for a living for years and sort of “collect” odd and unusual roads. That one looks like a gem to have driven. There is a road between Albuqurque NM and Tuscon AZ through the Zuni Indian Reserve that looks similar without the ocean and jungle. It is so twisting and mountainous that it shows as a straight line on the map. I used it once to get around higwway scales with an illegal (highway act wise, not police wise) load and it scared the heck out of me. Love the adrenaline rush.
I have to say I’m jealous PMHO, that road looks like so much fun. Any idea who built it and what its primary pupose was originally?
It just connected Hana to the rest of the island. Before the islands were found by… uh… us… I suppose they used boats to get back and forth. They certainly never expected very much traffic when the road was built.
5 mph? They don’t have much faith in those bridges, do they? And forget the one-lane bridge thing. The road looks like only one lane … with no shoulder.
the road is narrow but the bridges are barely wide enough for one car.
I confess. We have the T-Shirts
HA!