Haleakala National Park, Maui, Hawaii - September 2013

Every now and again things don't pan out quite as expected, today was such a day. On our little jaunt around the South Pacific a couple of years ago we visited island of Maui in Hawaii, with only one day off the ship we headed up to check out the volcanic Haleakala National Park. The ship anchored off Lahaina and we headed ashore bright and early on the one of the ships tenders, the day was a typical blue sky Hawaiian type of day, bright and sunny with a balmy breeze blowing. Jumping onto a comfortable coach we headed off on our journey up to Haleakala, the trip to the top would take couple of hours, initially we followed the Honoapi'ilani Highway along the coast giving us plenty of views out to the blue Pacific Ocean, before crossing the big isthmus that joins the two mountainous halves of Maui together and starting to climb.

Climbing up towards Haleakala National Park looking back down towards the large isthmus that joins the two mountainous ends of Maui together, Lahaina is further down the coast.

In the naughty seat at the back of the bus.

The climb up to Haleakala Crater involves a seemingly endless series of switchbacks with the views improving at every turn, well they were until we were enveloped in the cloud. By the time we arrived at the parks office the weather was very gloomy indeed, oh well, its all part of the adventure. Stepping out of the bus we were hit by the wind, and seeing that we were on a 5 week tour of the tropics we didn't have a lot of warm clothes with us so even wearing everything warm we had it was still, you might say....invigorating. After checking out the small garden of Silversword and having a quick look around we were back onto the warm and dry coach.

Hmm, looks a bit nasty!

The Haleakala National Park office with its small garden of Silversword.

Leaving the parks office the road continued to climb into the clouds, out the window we were passing through a barren moonscape with nothing appearing to grow above grass height. Arriving at the Haleakala Visitor Centre, which at around 2970 metres was the highest that I'd ever been in those days, we jumped out into the misty rain and headed to the lookout. Now I'd like to talk about the awesome view down almost a thousand metres into the crater (which is actually not a crater but a crater like basin!), but with the visibility well under 100 metres there was no views today. After checking out the interesting displays in the visitor centre we braved the wind and rain to have a bit of a look around, the lookouts only provided a view down into the swirling mist in the abyss. 

At least Sam had some long pants on.

This fool was only wearing shorts.

With no hope of a view we jumped on the bus and headed back to Lahaina, stopping on the way to check out the excellent Maui Ocean Centre on the way. The rest of the day was spent checking out Lahaina and relaxing in the sun, believe it or not. By the time we sailed away that evening the cloud was lifting from the mountains which at least gave us a great sunset view back towards the the West Maui Mountains.

There was a little wildlife braving the weather.

Visibility was pretty ordinary.

The Dirt.

Our visit to Haleakala National Park might not of given us any great views but it was still an interesting spot, it also gave me a bit of a feel for what would be involved doing a multi day walk there in the future. The park is home to a good network of trails which are serviced by some back country huts. The thought of a multi day stroll through a volcano that last erupted in 1790 sounds interesting to me, so I might be back one day, if only I could win lotto. Evidently the best time to visit Haleakala is for the sun rise, the later in the day it gets the more chance of being over run with cloud. Whenever you go take some warm clothes as even if the weather is OK it would still be decidedly chilly on top. This was part of a cruise we took with Princess, I've mentioned it before but they always seem to provide a good, value for money experience for us.

The sunset over the West Maui Mountains didn't disappoint.