Advertisement
Published: March 21st 2010
Edit Blog Post
"Maui became restless and fought the sun
With a noose that he laid.
And winter won the sun,
And summer was won by Maui."
--Queen Liliuokalani's family chant
Legend has it that the demi-god Maui was small, but a strong and determined god. There had been many complaints that the sun moved too quickly across the sky, making the days very short and the nights long. People suffered from the heat of the sun, yet did not have enough time of light in their day to get all of their work accomplished. Maui was determined to make the sun go slower to satisfy the needs of the people. With guidance from his mother and grandmother, Maui laid in wait for the sun and snared it as the first rays of light came over the mountain. He threatened the sun until it was agreed that the sun would move more slowly. Thus, the days were made longer so men could have more time to complete their tasks, and plants would have more time to grow.
If you look at a
map of the island, envision the west portion as Maui's head, the thin part connecting the two portions as his neck,
and the large part of the island as his torso.
Today we took a drive up the coast of west Maui, which is to say that we started at his neck, and drove up over the top of his head! The colors of the landscape in this area are even more amazing... the blues of the ocean and sky on one side of the road and the dark green mountain with a blanket of flaxen yellow grass on the other.
First, we stopped in Olowalu and took a hike down a long dirt road in search of the 300-year old petroglyphs carved into the side of the rock. 300 years ago doesn't really sound that old... were people really scratching pictures into the sides of rocks in the 1700s? Well, Hawaii wasn't "discovered" by the Europeans until 1778, and didn't have a written language until Christian missionaries developed an alphabet for them in the 19th century. (When Captain Cook first visited the Hawaiian islands in 1778, he wrote the name phonetically as "Owhyhee".) English has now taken over as the official language, and Hawaii has to make special efforts to preserve the language so that it doesn't become
extinct.
After we found the petroglyphs, we drove up to Lahaina, a historic whaling village where a giant banyan tree covers a 200 sq-ft area of the park (one tree!!). It has 12 main trunks and shades 2/3 of an acre. We stopped to watch the boats in the harbor, and had lunch in one of the many restaurants.
Later, we visited Makalua-puna Point, also known as Dragon's Teeth. During the lava flow, a strong wind swept over the point causing the lava to harden in a jagged upward formation. We also stopped at Nakalele Blowhole, which was unfortunately... not blowing.
We ended the day at the Feast at Lele luau... and as you can tell by the pictures of Kevin, I drove home.
* Scroll down for more pictures, and don't forget to click Next for two more pages of photos! *
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0342s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb