haleakalá sunrise

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plans took a turn last night, when one of my roomies (helen) came busting into the room announcing that her and a couple other friends were getting up early to go see the sunrise from the top of haleakalá, the world's largest dormant volcano. immediately, i asked if there was room for one more and she jumped out of the room to go ask. thankfully, i was rewarded for my forwardness and alarms were set for 3am for an early 3:20am departure!

3am came a little too quickly as it was well past 10:30pm when we went to bed, but the excitement of the journey was enough to keep all 5 of us awake, while stuffed in a small compact car... driving down the coast, we arrived in line with other cars excited about the prospect of seeing the sunset from 10023 feet up in the sky. the drive took us about 1.5 hours and we arrived at 4:50am, exactly 1 hour before the sunset was set to occur. many photos ensued and the sunrise above the clouds was absolutely amazing. along for the ride were new friends ben (switzerland and our driver), dorinda and dave (toronto) and helen (washington and my roomie). we even took a nice little family picture at the top to commemorate the event.

going back down, we stopped in town for breakfast at ihop (oh international house of pancakes, how i love you...) and are now back at the hostel in time to catch the daily tour to the beach!

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