The Road to Hana, and Beyond
We set out from Paia relatively early in the morning, having heard that the road was likely to get super crowded, heading clockwise around the island. It quickly turned into a very winding road.
Without many cars, the drive to Hana went fairly quickly. We were able to stop at our leisure a number of times for roadside stands that looked interesting, picking up various items like banana bread, fresh fruit, and chocolate. The drive itself was decently interesting with numerous waterfalls, but honestly, nothing too spectacular. It was pretty interesting how much the elevation of the road varied: one minute, we would be right down at the coast, and the next, we were way high up on a mountain.
We turned into Wai'anapanapa State Park on a whim, but it turned out we needed to make a reservation for it and it was sold out for the day. Apparently the main feature was a black sand beach, but we staying close to one of those on the Big Island anyway so it wasn't a big deal to get turned away.
There wasn't really anything to do or see in Hana, so we moved on from there fairly quickly.
After Hana is when the day really picked up. We picked up some huli-huli chicken a few miles down the road, following the handmade signs down a hill to a big tent, and then took the chicken down to Hamoa Beach. The beach was gorgeous, and the chicken was some of the best chicken I've ever eaten. I don't know how they got it so moist and juicy. After that, we hung out on the beach a bit and did a bit of swimming, before cleaning off and continuing on with our day.
The next big stop was the Kipahulu District of Haleakala National Park. We hiked several miles up to Waimoku Falls, and I thought the hike was really worthwhile. We were a little worried towards the beginning because it started raining, but trusted that like all the rain we'd seen in Hawaii so far, it would let up before too long and give way to sun, which is indeed what happened.
There was a lot of really interesting stuff on the hike up: several waterfall viewpoints, a massive banyan tree, an extensive bamboo forest that sounded cool because all of the huge bamboo stalks would knock against each other with any breeze. Once you get close to Waimoku Falls itself, there are some signs that forbid you from going any further, trying to scare you from doing so by talking about shards of falling rocks. Based on the trail that went right past them, I would wager that you can get really close up to the waterfall, stand near the bottom, feel its spray, and bask in its beauty. I'm not saying we did this, nosirree - there was a sign saying not to...
Now, here I want to call out some horrible fearmongering that I came across while reading about the driving route, the day before we did this. If you try to look anything up about driving all the way around Maui, completing the loop around Hana clockwise along the Pi'ilani Highway, you'll find endless posts about how awfully dangerous it is and how you'll get smashed by rocks while waiting days to get towed while also getting carjacked. There are also a lot of people that will yell that your rental contract will be violated because of a short unpaved section. Strangely, I didn't see any of these people yelling the same thing about the unpaved parking lot of Leoda's, the unpaved food truck park by the airport, or any of the other numerous unpaved areas you might drive on during your visit.
I'd like to say that the road past Hana was my favorite part of the entire drive. The landscape really opens up and you're treated to wide, sweeping views of the island that completely take your breath away. We pulled off onto the shoulder at one point just to take it all in. The road runs along the south side of Haleakala, which descends steeply towards the ocean, through volcanic landscapes. Below you, the ocean crashes into the coast as far as the eye can see, into arches and other stark rock formations. Honestly, this part of the drive rivals the 1 up the California Coast.
This isn't to say that you should just blindly do it. The fearmongering is really dumb and annoying, but you also shouldn't be an ignorant driver who isn't situationally aware. Check that it's not currently closed on the HDOT website. Understand the inherent risks of driving somewhere very remote, not just on Maui, but anywhere, and think through a plan on the off chance that something goes wrong. The road itself is just fine: it is a state-maintained highway, and while there are brief unpaved sections, if you've already managed to drive all the way to Hana then you'll have no issues at all completing the loop from a pure driving skill standpoint. Many roads around where we live like Platte Clove Road, or even just some random unpaved road in the forest, are harder to drive than this road.
Anyways, once we got to 'Ulupalakua it felt like we were fully back on "normal" roads. We stopped into the ranch store there to see what was up, and we were clearly far from the only people who drove all the way around; there was a whole sign they had about completing the road to Hana.
It was a long and awesome day, but we managed to get back to Paia relatively early and grab a delicious dinner at the Paia Fish Market followed by some pretty great ice cream at Roselani, before finally calling it a day.