Another high point of the trip was the famous road to Hana. Some call it "the marriage tester", others the most beautiful road in the world. A slice of Hawaii said to have provided the background for countless Hollywood movies, of which I have probably seen none. A snaking, slithering highway with over 600 twists and bends, with over 50 one-way bridges, all in all some 36 miles one can cover in (at best, without stopping) about two hours. Stopping, as we did in the first part of our trip, at all points maps deem worth mentioning; taking all paths that lead, through the rainforest, to waterfalls and palm-tree gardens, and coconut trees, and banana-trees and sugar cane and taro and pineapple plantations, and star-fruit trees, one can easily spend days simply traveling along the road to Hana, as it winds its way along the northern side of Maui, by the side of an endless ocean.
We left the hotel around eight in the morning and entered Hana around 4 p.m. We stopped at the Twin Falls trail, and walked about a mile through the tropical forest and the last 30 meters or so through knee-deep water to get to one of the waterfalls that give the trail's name. Later on, a few miles down the road, at yet another stop, we photographed ourselves as tree-huggers (evidentiary pictures to be displayed in manner and place to be determined and publicized for the convenience of any interested audience); we followed a deliciously ironic sign that said "Garden of Eden, next right", to end up in a park run by hippies, a garden within a garden.
The road to Hana... how to describe it best? You keep driving on this narrow road, now crammed between mountains, now teetering between the verge of a lush valley that ends, somewhere in the distance, in a very pacific and very blue ocean, and a mountainous wall that you cannot see, only guess beneath a jumble of vegetation that oozes micro-waterfalls and rivulets like a sponge someone didn't squeeze hard enough.
As darkness descends, you roll down your windows to take in the scents, the sounds, now strange, now funny, now vaguely threatening, now simply charming, of countless birds you will never see from the "mad" 15-miles-an-hour rush of the car. Think about the silent, floating scenes in Werner Herzog river movies and you may get some approximation, though of course there is much stylization in those, of what the road to Hana feels like, of that sensation you have, especially on the way back, if the late twilight hours catch up with you, when the air cools down, and shadows grasp the road with long and wind-ruffled fingers, when the humidity that has seeped from the mountain-side all day long gathers up its courage and strength and begins to overflow the road, the sensation that it, the road, only exists there through a whim of nature, that the surrounding forest might at any moment clamp shut around the road, the way a carnivorous plant closes around its victim, that lianes and roots and branches and leaves and plants could suddenly erupt, overgrow, surround, pierce and cover the pavement and no one would ever know there once was a road there.
We drove back without any stops, and as we reached civilization it was already dark.