The Road to Hana

Next to honeymooners and Maui Wowie, another thing synonymous with Maui is the Road to Hana. It's about a 4-5 hour drive with all kinds of twists and turns, waterfalls and rainbow coloured trees (yes, really!) and all about the journey, not the destination. They also filmed a bunch of Jurassic Park stuff here, which is pretty cool when you're checking out these vistas. This adventure is filled with metaphors for life and the last time we did this, it was on my 30th birthday and Mandy had booked us a room overlooking a black sand beach with a bottle of Hennessey XO cognac awaiting our arrival.

That was the last time...10 years ago. Sans kids. With zero foresight, we set on this magical journey, effectively a 10 hour road trip. Had that sunk in earlier (in black and white, without the allure of Maui), it sounds like the worst form of torture you can impose on kids. And the saying "Happy wife, happy life" doesn't hold a candle to "Happy kids, happy everyone else." It doesn't sound as nice, but neither does a group of whiny kids, so there is nothing more true than this statement.

Aside from a few rough patches, the kids were exceptional and I directly credit the parenting. Maybe one day, I'll write an award winning book on how-to parent. (Full disclosure: I had to stop writing this because Leila was crying that Milena had thrown her book across the bed while Ethan was upset that his Youtube video of trains wasn't coming up and instead, a video obituary of Jerry Lewis...in Spanish).

This pic above is in a sneaky place and might be the path to enlightenment, but it was raining and the idea of traversing a narrow pathway along a cliff to get there wasn't overly appealing. Plus, I had a beer that wasn't on ice and it was a mile away...so that kinda trumped a lot of things.

We made it to a black sand beach and it's both awesome and painful. Since the rock hasn't completely broken down into sand, it's tricky to walk on especially once you get to the waves and they toss you to a less than soft spot and you curse all things good because all you wanted to do was relax and jump in the water while holding a kid but now you're holding on for dear life while your feet are getting killed and you're still trying to look like both a competent and cool dad and I'm aware that this is an oxymoron. Phew.

So you buy an app or CD and it tells you all kinds of great stuff along your trip. We bought the CD the first time and it was awesome, but this time we had two cars and decided to buy the app. Very cool as well, but the biggest takeaway from it was the reminder to take less photos just take a breath and let it all soak in. Clearly the narrator didn't have kids with sunblock in their eyes while offering such clear advice.

There were also some cool lava tubes to walk through, but this tunnel is the only one we had time for since we had stopped many times before. The entrance was really low and being a thoughtful parent, I warned my kids numerous times to watch their heads. During this sage advice, they stopped, I stopped and straightened up a bit and scratched my back with great force. It's kind of like a regrettable tattoo - everyone knows that it's there and questions your outlook on life.

 We ended off the night with Jen graciously taking care of the kids and Mandy and I going to one of our favourite restaurants, Sansei. This place has a modest appearance but the owner and chef DK knows his stuff. In fact, he has a book that we promptly bought. We went for our anniversary dinner and just like the past 10 years, it went by very quickly because we enjoyed it so much.