Hawaii Day 7 - The drive to Hana

I had to take a picture of our leis before they withered away! We placed them on tables outside on the balcony in the shapes of hearts, and kept it like that for the rest of our stay.

We had breakfast at Duo's, with me having a ranch style breakfast with eggs (which I passed off to the kids) and hubby had poached eggs. My daughter had waffles and her brother ate our leftovers.

Our plans for the day were to head to Hana on the east coast of the island via the picturesque yet narrow and winding Hana highway. Many guides will tell you how it's a great drive, but it really is best enjoyed over a day or two, with an overnight stay in Hana, in my opinion. We drove there and back (to make it back for a dinner appointment) so we were a bit rushed.

Our first stop along the highway was at Twin waterfalls. A short hike to get to, and people were swimming in the clear pool.

Great views of the coastline abound along the highway.

Unfortunately the drive was not very relaxing due to the amount of people on the highway and being stuck behind slow drivers in this often one lane highway. There are 600 curves and 54 bridges, making it a slow drive and there aren't many places you can just pull over to take pictures. There are a few 2-3 car spots where you can stop but they were often full. There was also some kind of roadwork which caused a halt for about about half an hour (which is when I took the picture above). The queue of cars was long and we were getting hungry by then, eager to get to Hana to find some lunch.

We stopped at Bruddah Hutts Island BBQ and had the pulled pork and the chicken. The chicken was well enjoyed but we weren't that hungry (having brought snacks galore for the long drive) and so the pulled pork though nice wasn't able to be finished.

We drove down to O'heo gulch, which is part of the Halakalea national park (lucky we had our 3 park pass) to do a quick walk and see the seven sacred pools.

We were short on time so we elected not to do the 2 mile long Pipiwai trail, and just do the Kuloa point trail instead.

There were lots of Pandana trees around which pine like fruits which reminded me of Bunya nuts. The walk was quite easy to do and we made it back to the car and started the long drive back. If we had more time we would have liked to stop by Wai'anapanapa State park and the lava tube, as well as have a look at Hamoa beach.

We did stop at Wailua falls on the way back for a quick photo - it would be more impressive had I walked further in but it was crowded (there was even a little food stand there) and plenty of parking.

Some gorgeous sunset views of the volcanoes as we drove back to Wailea. Haleakala with the clouds descending was nice as well as the sunrays over the volcanoes behind us.

Dinner was at Morimoto's in the Andaz Wailea resort, and it was a bit hard trying to find the restaurant! Masaharu Morimoto, Iron Chef America, has a number of chains throughout the states, the original in Philadelphia. Maui's Morimoto restaurant opened in 2013.

Whist we had the 10 course degustation, the kids had their own menu and chose sushi tuna and avocado, and chicken teriyaki. Their meals came out quite quickly.

The good thing was it kept them quiet. The bad thing is that they finished before we were through our 4th dish!

Tom yum soup with mushroom and radish. Nothing super exciting about this dish, just a standard Tom Yum flavour.

Toro tartare with 6 condiments - nori, wasabi, cream cheese, guacamole, sweet onion, japanese crackers and dashi sauce. An interesting way to present toro (though in my opinion I prefer the flesh as a slice so I can savour the way the fatty tuna melts in your mouth) but it was interesting. Points for originality, not so keen on the flavour or having to dig it out with my flat paddle.

Amberjack carpaccio. I liked it, the condiments may have been a little overpowering.

Bagna Cauda with Anchovies and olive oil. This is an Italian dip which was different. Happy to have some green vegies!

Oyster with foie gras and uni with chawan mushi. I always like chawan mushi. Foie gras not super strong flavoured.

Palette cleanser - cucumber herb sorbet with gin pipette. I think the pipette is cute.

Sushi plate - maguro, aji, monk fish liver, striped jack and Hawaiian prawn. Monk fish liver is the foie gras of the sea. I actually like it a bit less seasoned - but apparently they put a lot of sauce on it to drown out the fishy flavour. 

Duck breast in Thai red curry sauce. I like duck. I do feel like I'm having an international meal with dishes representing many different countries.

Surf n turf - Grilled Haawaiian octopus with red miso and chickpea bakes, and Wagyu. The Wagyu has too  much sauce on it. I really like my wagyu plain, the flavour is in the meat. I didn't like this dish very much. 

Chiffon cake with white chocolate pearls, strawberry meringue, lychee jelly and grapefruit. Very sweet dessert. Americans love super sweet desserts.

Overall a nice experience, but I think I had a better time at Merrimans. Morimotos was good for a casual pricey dinner. Service was decent, but I wish the kids food lasted them a bit longer!

Hawaii Day 6 - Maui

Time to leave the big island and head to our second island stop, which was Maui. Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian islands.

We landed really early and grabbed our hire car, which was a Mazda CX5, and set out to explore the NW corner of the island but after driving for more than an hour along the winding Kahekili highway, we found that the road as blocked before Nakalele point! I took some pictures to prove we were out that way, and then we headed back to go from the other side, with a stop in Lahaina for lunch.

Lahaina was the former capital of Hawaii, and the Front Street seems to be where all the tourist action is. We had lunch at the Paia Fish market, which was quite popular and the fish was quite well done as well. The kids enjoyed their fish and chips, whereas I had the fish tacos and hubby had grilled Mahi Mahi.

There are some huge Banyan trees in the park!

We then drove further up to Ka'ananpali looking for the Whaler's museum which turned out to be closed for renovations, so the kids went to the beach which was quite lovely.

Further up we got to a blowhole and heart shaped rock which needed a bit of walking to get to (but the blowhole could be seen from the car park). If you caught it at the right time, there was a rainbow in the droplets from the blowhole!

We stayed at the Four Seasons in Wailea, which was our splurge hotel of the trip, and it was a really lovely hotel. When we arrived our car was valet parked (which unfortunately was at a cost of $30 per day and not very convenient to us) and we were given leis of flowers and nuts as a welcome. The children were made to feel very welcome too, with an octopus soft toy and sponges near the bath spelling out both their names. Small notes to the kids, and room amenities like beach bag, nice slippers, and robes for all four of us made it feel that much more luxurious.

And the view from our balcony was pretty awesome!

After cleaning up we went down to have dinner at Spago's, which was one of the restaurants within the hotel. It's an upmarket modern hawaiian restaurant, and they had a kids menu as well as colouring to entertain them.

I ordered 2 mocktails - one for the kids which my daughter quite liked.

Entrees were Japanese Hamachi and Ahi Poke cones. I quite liked the crispy cone that my poke was in (poke is raw sliced fish salad, and ahi is tuna) and it was quite spicy. However, it clearly wasn't for everyone as the next table barely touched theirs, and I almost felt like asking to eat theirs for them so it wouldn't go to waste!

For mains we had caramelised pork chop and macadamia encrusted mahi mahi. Both of which were on a beetroot flavoured poi base (taro) which made the poi so much more palatable.

For dessert we had Kaiserschmarren creme fraiche strawberry souffle pancake, which basicallly looked like an exploded souffle. It was very tasty, but we were so full by then, it was difficult to enjoy. The restaurant looked over the pool which was nicely lit at night. Time for a well earned sleep in our comfy 5 star hotel beds!

Hawaii Day 5 - Kona

Kona is on the western side of the big Island and there is a road cutting through the middle of the island from Hilo to Kona called the Saddle road. It's actuallly a nice big freeway but also a nice drive as you see the volcano scenery on either side of you.

It takes about 2 hours to drive it (depending on how fast you drive), and when we arrived at Kona it was a very different atmosphere to what I'd been used to in Hilo. Now THIS is a resort town! Fancy shops lining the beachfront streets, and just many more people around in beachy gear.

Dropped by the market but it was a bit of a tourist trap, nothing that I would recommend buying there. We had a submarine tour with Atlantis to get to so we headed up there, stopping to do one of those Pearl in an Oyster things, which yielded us 2 pearls.

The reef is quite good in Maui so there was a lot of fish, and we even saw a white tipped reef shark underneath a shipwreck. There was a skeleton tied to the shipwreck as a bit of a prank, which actually had an amusing story to it - it was put there as a halloween joke by some divers but they secured it with wire which rapidly rusted and broke, leaving the skeleton to wash up on the beach in Kona much to everyone's surprise that year. We even saw dolphins on the way out.

We went for lunch at Sushi Shiono's which was rather good, with quite fresh fish. We ordered the Shiono special, a chirashi sushi, some salmon avocado rolls for the kids, and uni (sea urchin) ships extra.

This made us late for our Big Island Bees tour, but we managed to arrive just in time to catch the end of it. I learned a lot about bees!

After that it was time to hit the road to go home - it was a long drive back in the dark on unfamiliar road (not to mention still getting used to this driving on the wrong side of the road business). It was our last day on the Big Island, and we had an early start the next morning!