THE BIG STORY
Obey Your Noodle
Asheville is out, Hana is in as our Sister City, that is, where we run away to when even our Keys paradise lets our spoiled asses down. Asheville, news alert, has WINTER. Hana, on the sleepy end of the sleepy island of Maui, has trade winds and even better weather than the Keys. And much more.
We’re spending a week in a condo right over the softly crashing waves of Hana Bay. Hana’s main tourist trade is day-trippers from the big hotels on the northern half of Maui. They barrel down the famous, 600+ turns of the Hana Highway, have lunch and drive back. That’s why there are a dozen funky lunch diners and only two evening restaurants, run by the single fancy hotel in town.
Thus any time except from noon-2 p.m. is for chilling out with the 3,000 blessed locals who inhabit the 5-mile stretch called Hana in the same way Big Coppitt has a Key West address. The town itself is about four blocks square. The grocery store is 100 years old and looks it. One gas station. Not only no stop lights, not even a stop sign on the two-lane “highway.” One upscale bar at the fancy hotel and that’s it for the nightlife. No one goes there.
So what’s so great about Hana? First, the natural beauty makes the Keys look like a truck stop in New Jersey by comparison. Mountain slopes of old lava flows leading up to an extinct crater. Lush, brightly flowering foliage everywhere matching our own West Martello and Botanical Garden. About 85% wild, 12% landscaped, and the rest lawns. The lawns, amazingly, are all perfectly mowed. In the natural disorder of tulip trees, plumeria, hibiscus, etc. they have a single Disney-World neatness obsession, which is mowing these large lawns.
Hana is an amazing combination of uncontrolled funk and clean safety. Natives with few dollars but rights to “tribal lands” are equals if not superior to the rich movie stars with homes here. There is no litter. No homeless, not a single panhandler, a few hairy guys in beat-up pickups, a local says they are either living off the land or trust-funders posing as old hippies.
The foliage, the people and the ocean. Ours is as exciting as a bathtub compared to the surf crashing on basalt cliffs in all directions here. Hamoa Beach is Michener’s nomination as the most beautiful in the world. He’s been around. I say it is second after a beach in Wayag in Raja Ampat, which even he missed. Away from the surf, shore snorkeling 40 yards off the sand put me among at least 50 varieties of reef fish on 30% live coral heads (I consider our Keys heads to be down to 5% live), a 10-minute walk from our condo.
Our condo lacks not only A/C, which Cynthia and I don’t use even in Key West, and TV, which we need a detox week away from, but also has no “fitness center.” So I’ve been forced to spend 20 minutes/day walking back and forth down and up the bluff to the snorkel beach and spending 40 minutes there with my finny buddies. Then bring a bodega lunch back to share with my Sweetie.
Noodle got us here the right way. He drove the shuttle bus from our airport hotel stopover in the north of Maui to the car rental agency to pick up our Jeep. We had planned, of course, like everyone else, to drive down the famous Hana Highway on the northeast side of the island. It was open for only two one-hour stretches during the day due to repaving a five-mile stretch in the middle.
Noodle is clearly named for being 6’7″ tall, thin, with golden blonde hair. He said, “It’s an hour wait in traffic without the construction! If you drive that way now, you’ll spend 3 or 4 hours backed up. Take the back route.”
We’d planned this trip for a year. I had it set in my mind we were taking the goldanged Hana Highway, construction be damned. “No!,” I said, with that nasty tone that usually gets everyone to shut up and talk to someone else. But Noodle persisted. He said that portion of the map that said rental cars not allowed didn’t apply to my Jeep. He said going south around the other side of the volcano and then east along the old cattle ranch was even more beautiful than the regular highway.
What got me was his pointing out that we’d see the famous highway on the way back, going counter to the traffic flow, with no holdups except timing the construction opening. I backed down. And gave him a $5 tip for the advice.
Boy, was I wise to obey my Noodle. The back road was the most beautiful road trip I’ve been on in my life. Whenever you are lucky enough for a local eccentric to give you inside advice, take it. Sure, once in a while it’ll cost you an overnight in the local hoosegow, but in a place like Hana, that story would probably be worth a byline in the NYT travel section, where Cynthia read the clincher that got us here.
If the trip back up to the airport transition hotel is as easy as Noodle says, I’ll tip him another $20. First obey, then take care of, the lucky Noodles in your life.
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