Ethan's Winter Bike Riding Trip Around Maui
A couple of winters ago a good friend suggested we get away and go somewhere warm where we could ride our bikes, explore, and relax…
Of course this sounded great to me and once we found cheap flights, it was decided- we were going to Maui. We packed relatively light as we planned on travelling by bike most of the time, and we didn't want to load them up too much. After we landed, we built our bikes in the airport and rode off to our hostel where we were both so dead tired but so happy to be riding around in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of January! Al's girlfriend, Justine, joined us less then a week in at which point we rented a car and we decided to take a drive across the island to a campsite at the base of the volcano Haleakala. The sites on this coastline were beautiful; there was such intense contrast between the black volcanic rock and the lush greenery all around it, it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before!
After that we stayed in Kihei in a metal shack compound (yes, you read that right). We spent our time in Kihei by driving up the Haleakala and our rental car was not too happy about climbing 10,000ft (literally- the coolant was boiling by the top). Once up there we went for a short 45 minute hike but even that was exhausting because of the elevation and how thin the air was.
On another day we drove back to the base of the mountain and we decided to cut out the first 3,000ft of climbing (the section is mostly country roads and leads from the ocean to the actual base of the mountain at a very slow incline) so we started biking up at 7,000ft over the course of 4.5 hours getting to the top. The distance was only 35km but the elevation was killer. I can honestly say that at the time, this was the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life, but the feeling of making it to the top was certainly worth the struggle. The descent back down was equally worth it, as we got to coast 35km back down to the car and we even got to pass through the cloud line which left us coated in a fine mist- check this out!
After that ride we had an incredible sleep in our trusty rental car before we returned it the next morning and set off to the nice tourist town of Lahaina. Camping in Hawaii on public land isn't as easy as we had hoped so we ended up stashing our stuff on an abandoned construction site which would be our home for the next few days. During our time in Lahaina we were mostly just beach bums and by this leg of the trip we felt we deserved to be.
