Saturday, July 29: Sitting On Top of the World
Just as I was getting used to the time difference, our alarms went off on Saturday precisely at 1:30am for a 2:15 departure time. Of course! Why not go on vacation and torture yourself through sleep deprivation? We both woke up surprisingly easily. I read that to make the sunrise at Haleakala, you should schedule it for early in your trip when your body is still adjusting to the time difference, and that worked for us. We rolled out of bed and dressed in the only long sleeve shirts and pants we packed (when packing for Hawaii, you don't think "well I need to dress warmly..."). While Rick was getting ready, I peeked out onto our balcony to hear the ocean waves –still there! Phew. We packed a blanket, a few snacks, water, coffee, and – omg omg – we had no travel coffee mugs. 2am with no coffee? We filled our water bottles with coffee as makeshift containers and headed out.
After a quick stop down the road at Safeway for travel coffee mugs (Hawaii style!) and two big bottles of water (because our water bottles were currently coffee canteens and neither of us really wanted coffee-flavored water later during our hike, call us crazy). And we were on our way! The trip up to Haleakala took about 2 hours, and there was something peaceful driving through the normally bustling streets of a beachside resort town that was now eerily quiet, save for the ocean and the wind. As we started the summit up to the mountain (which took about 1h15) I was kicking myself for not downloading the full version of an app which uses GPS to track you throughout Maui and give you interesting tips and history bits as you drive (the GyPSy app – something we realized embarrassingly late was a play on GPS). It wouldn’t download without wifi, so we settled for a short, basic reading of the Haleakala Wikipedia page… (if you would rather skip a brief history-geology lesson, you should also skip to the next paragraph). Haleakala, which means “House of the Sun,” is actually a massive shield volcano and comprises 75% of Maui island. In other words, it is… pretty big. The volcano is dormant and last erupted (most likely) in the 17th century. The famous “crater” is actually not a crater, in the volcanic sense, but is just a result of the process of erosion that makes it appear “crater-like.” The “crater” is dotted with cones that are actually small flows of lava from past eruptions, and – as a result – are actual craters. If you count its below ocean size, Haleakala is super big – like bigger, than Mt. Everest (by the smallest of margins – 675 feet), because its land mass stretches down 19,680 below sea level. Standing tall at 10,028 feet above sea level, Hawaiian mythology says that from the top of Haleakala the demi-god Maui lassoed the sun and slowed it down to increase the length of sun each day. Standing on top of the summit where the sun was as close as I’d ever seen, it seems plausible to me.
After we paid our $25 parking fee and confirmed our reservation (due to the popularity of sunrise they now require reservations and are always sold out about weeks in advance), we entered the national park and the route became quite windy. Thankful Rick was driving, I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like in dense fog or clouds. Our night was crystal clear, but there were no guardrails and the road would curve and drop off in unexpected short intervals. It’s like a video game except actually it’s real life and you might die. The darkness clearly made it worse, as we couldn’t determine the slope -- we could only see that the ground dropped off and extended into pitch black, save for the lights of a town several thousand feet below us. Fun!
We made it to the first of two summit parking lots around 4:10am, and parked there briefly to use the restroom before heading up to the higher parking lot about a half mile away. At the first lot, we got our first glimpse of the night sky and the stars above. To say it was captivating would be an understatement; I had to drag Rick back into the car to make it to the second summit (which was smaller and would close once parking was full), reminding him the same sky waited for us there. The small lot (I would guess it held about 30 cars) was half full, so we pulled in and then made our way to “Red hill,” the true summit of Haleakala and perched ourselves just to the southwest of where the sun would rise. I would say “and the waiting began,” but truly the stars were almost the better half of the show. Thousands of them in the night sky clustered in bits and pieces. The number of shooting stars was unbelievable (really just bits of asteroids burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, Rick dutifully informed me when I asked). If you stared at one spot long enough (and by long enough I mean a mere 30 seconds or so), you were bound to see a streak of white cascading across the sky. It was obvious we lucked out weather-wise, as you couldn’t ask for clearer, crisper air. I may not be a master photographer like my husband, but even I knew the light was too delicate to be photographed (though that didn’t deter several of our sunrise compatriots from trying). Partly sad I wasn’t able to share this view by photo, it also made it that much more unique – it was a sight you could only see with your own eyes, and it already made the 2am wake up call worth it. Before the sun even rose, Rick declared he was coming back tomorrow at 2am. (I did not.)
About 30 minutes into our personal planetarium show, Rick began to notice a bit of light in the East and for about 15-20 minutes we couldn’t decide whether that was the first marks of the sun’s pre-dawn light or just Venus’ reflection bouncing off the ocean. I have been lucky? fortunate? insane? enough that, in fact, this was my second climbing-a-mythological-mountain-for-the-sunrise experience, and I noted that my friends and I also wondered that same thing when we climbed Mt. Sinai for sunrise.
(As a side note, climbing Mt. Sinai [where Moses presumably received the 10 commandments] was also an amazing experience but certainly better suited for my 19-year old self and not nearly as accessible as Haleakala. Instead of driving up to the summit, we had to hike through rocky terrain in the middle of the night – following a Bedouin guide who seemed indifferent to our presence at best. The only bathroom was a hut with a hole over a cliff, and instead of helpful guides and signs illuminating interesting facts and figures about the cultural importance and geological features of the area, camels spit at us and Russian orthodox pilgrims would break into loud, bellowing hymns at the drop of a hat. Slightly different ambiance.)
After about 15 minutes, it was easy to confirm that – yes – this was sunrise because the light grew stronger and began to drown out some of the beautiful stars above us. Eventually, only the brightest (the Orion constellation and Venus) remained. The slow creeping of the colors over the horizon was almost better then when the sun emerged itself, though it seemed like lots of people arrived only in time to see the sun crawl over the horizon around 5:50. Rick and I both remarked they missed the best part of the show - the stars and the slow seep of colors. Photos definitely tell the story of the sunrise better than words can, so I’m including some of the best (courtesy of Rick) below in the gallery.
It was cold at the summit (probably about 35-45 degrees in the pitch black darkness, maybe less so when the wind picked up a bit), so in a weird way we were both glad the sun was up and able to warm us up. A sign at the summit informed us that due to its height, Haleakala always remained about 30-35 degrees cooler than at the beaches on sea level below. We walked around the top summit area for a bit; Rick took about 5 dozen photos, and then we headed down to the lower parking lot to re-fuel and head in to the crater on the Sliding Sands hiking trail, which winds through part of 20-mile wide “crater.” It was about 9am when we started our hike. We were lucky that the altitude didn’t bother either of us, but we definitely noticed the thinner air and knew that we didn’t want to risk it too much hiking back up, so we only went about 1.6 miles into a second vista point before turning around. The terrain, as lots of guidebooks and literature tells you, was truly outer-worldly. We had somehow made it from tropical beaches to Mars in just a 2-hour drive. As many signs informed us, life did not survive on Haleakala except for a few flight-less insects and hearty plants (and even than I think it was, like, two species of plants that didn't even look like plants. Just burnt out cacti...). Still, the view was breathtaking as the deep valleys and jagged hills of the crater met the clouds socked in just below. Rick took another 5 dozen photos before we headed the 1.6 miles back UP the trail to our car. I was starting to feel the 2am wake-up call and was ready to move on, but I think Rick would have preferred to stay there all day.
So we hopped in the car and headed down the mountain on a road that was new to us, since we drove up it in darkness. Still a little nerve-wracking, it was hard not to (as a passenger at least) take my eyes off the view as we descended down from the clouds and could make out bits of civilization wayyyyy far down below. It wasn’t hard to see how it was a sacred place in Hawaiian culture; only the gods and goddesses could survive and thrive in such a beautiful, but rugged, place. Nice job, deities.
Finally off the mountain, we both wanted more coffee, so I directed us to Komoda’s bakery in the up-country town of Makawao. We arrived around 11 or 11:30 and I immediately regretted not having more time to spend in Makawao, where the main street was lined with little shops and art galleries. Komoda’s was no frills (a generous description), surely a sign of good food to come, and we picked up cinnamon malasadas (a Portuguese donut variation), plus another pack of donuts to meet their credit card minimum (oh what sacrifice, buying more delicious donuts). I’m pretty sure the coffee had been sitting out since 7am that morning, but it hit the caffeine spot and the malasadas melted in our mouth.
We headed over to the “Maui Swap Meet” a huge market that’s half crafts half farmer’s market held on the campus of UH-Maui every Saturday morning from 9am-1pm.
We arrived around noon and strolled the shops picking up a few choice souvenirs. I knew that would be the best place for selection and price of souvenirs, and it did not disappoint. By this time, we were really running on fumes and were both burning up in the midday sun at the market (it’s hard to dress for both 40 degree weather and 90 degree weather in the same day…) and were ready to collapse at home. We arrived back to the villas around 1:30 and then I have literally no idea what I did- lunch maybe? In any case, we didn’t fall asleep until 3:30 or so for a nap.
I woke with a start at 6pm, and woke Rick up to go find some dinner. We ventured down to the north side of Lahaina around 7, and checked in at Aloha Mixed Plate. We originally said we didn’t want to wait for dinner, but the casual open-air setting of the oceanfront patio, which was lit by torch light, and the expansive Hawaiian cuisine menu drew Rick in, so we dutifully sat through a 30 minute wait for a table. My body was starting to revolt against me – 6 hour time changes? 2am wake up calls? Irregular dining times? Not enough salad? More water please! – and I began to feel it. It became clear that my body would have much preferred to skip dinner and sleep right on through to morning thank-you-very-much, so this dinner was a bit of a blur to me. I remembered drinking a lot of water (I honestly think our poor waiter re-filled my glass at least 10 times), a salad, and fried noodles with meat and stir-fry veggies (fried being a misnomer – they were actually quite light and hit the spot perfectly). Rick got the “aloha mixed plate” which, as far as I could tell, consisted of a lot of meat, rice, and macaroni salad. He said it was delicious. We both split the ahi tuna poke for an appetizer, which again was the highlight of the meal for us. Full and hydrated, we made it back to the villas and crashed into bed for the second time that day. After such a busy Saturday, we had no plans for the next day and had determined that spending three days on Hawaii with no beach time clearly was a travesty, so we planned to remedy it on Sunday.
