Life of Wry

Darlene and I opted for a coastline exploration day. We decided to turn left out of our driveway instead of right this time. And, cutting to the chase, went about 12 miles up the coast, is all. But, wow, there was plenty to discover and enjoy on this part of West Maui.

Lower Honoapi’ilani Road is the alternative route to the main highway 30 (also known as the Honoapi’ilani Highway), and from our place you can follow this road another four miles, or so, before it rejoins 30. This stretch offers numerous great pullover spots and nice beaches/coves.

We meandered through condos and seemingly modest residential neighborhoods for about three miles, saw a sign to Napili and turned left.  We got very lucky with an immediate parking spot next to a sign that said beach access. We followed it cluelessly toward the water, not really knowing we’d end up on a seriously popular beach.  Turns out, there are about ten resorts that share this sandy cove (and all have Napili in their names… Napili Village, Hale Napili, Napili Sunset, Napili Point, Napili Shores…), so it’s crowded. It provided for some entertaining people watching, though, which amused us for about an hour.

This is about the full the arc of the Napili shoreline, bordered on both ends by tidepools:

It had a short and steep shore break, but it seemed like a nice place to swim if you didn’t mind all the folks.

We went about another mile or so (Napili is the unnamed cove south of Kapalua Bay on this map) and came to Oneloa Beach. Parked at that P spot.

This was a pretty expansive bay with a boardwalk protecting vegetation in need of restoration.

But we found a beach access and did spend some time swimming here, though we had to be careful to avoid rocks. Windy, but warm and fun, and very few people.

Darlene…

And moi…

Then, THEN, we found the most marvelous spot. We were looking for a formation called Dragon Teeth, but instead found a burger shack. With an alluring beach. And breathtaking views. And insanely appealing cocktails.

Our table and view, and the relatively secluded beach (DT Fleming)…

The menu:

The cocktail I ended up with:

Which looked like this (and went down nicely with the slow-roasted pork sandwich and sweet potato fries):

After swimming for about half an hour, we continued on up the coast another six miles or so to the Nakalele Blowhole, the environs of which look like this (and if you look carefully down by the water’s edge, you can see the tower of water coming out of the blow hole):

Close up, looks more like this:

We didn’t go down there–oh, my nagging hip–but it looked spectacular and worthwhile.

Some additional views along the coast, all filtered up…

Highway 30 is a windy road…

At this stop, we came across drying hides (which stunk):

The drive home from Nakalele was about fifteen minutes, as we avoided altogether the Lower Road. This seemed so funny after spending most of the day to get as far as we did (about eleven miles).

We hung out on our lanai for a while with our own homemade Mai Tais and took in the rainbow show…

Then went the 1.7 miles south to the Westin to join the others for another group barbecue dinner, this one hosted by Denise and John.  It was a rainbow kind of evening… here’s one shot from their place, looking east toward the West Maui mountains:

Here’s John grilling a variety of fresh fish, obtained at the same market where we’d found ours–right on the lower road, between our two places:

Here are Yali, Carolyn, Kelsey and Aaron:

We ate up in the boys’ room, which was interesting (five guys in a condo). It was a bounty of fabulous fish and all kinds of freshly made supplemental salads, plus leftovers from earlier meals. Great group, so much fun.

This was also a so-long party for Jordon who was taking off for the airport at about 8:00, bound for a rock concert in Copenhagen.

These kids have a hard life.