A highlight of photos from my Maui trip in May, all on the first Monday.
We drove from our spot in Kihei to Kula for a paraglide pick-up spot. The view seemed so removed at the time.
My dear friend, Zoë, higher off the ground than she appears.
Post-glide glow.
Got hot pretty early in the day with the strong sun.
The ever-changing topography of Maui has been the only thing I've every come close to comparing to Arizona--every 1.5-2 hours there was something totally different! This was our view to the right from the top of our jump spot. The opening photo in this post was directly ahead. So weird to me!
Head above the clouds. The road up to Haleakala was not so difficult--we were halfway to the summit when we went paragliding in Kula. The confusing part was that the summit has two different visitor centers, and we, in our oxygen-adjusting states, were not sure where the trailhead was when we first got into the park. The way the Sliding Sands, or Keonehe‘ehe‘e, trail works is that you park at one end, hike down into the summit, up the other side of the crater, and then hitchhike back. We didn't see many hitchhikers--or other cars--on our drive into the summit's trailhead.
Highway to heaven? Not quite sure, but I'd buy it.
The top of the summit. Admittedly, we were a tad chilled when we first arrived due to the volume of wind. Once we started our descent and the wind was blocked, we were baking in open alpine desert.
The colors of the summit were truly incredible.
Y'all! This was my first trip getting to take my new camera. My jump to the Canon 5D Mark III from the Canon T5 Rebel was stupid cool on this trip. Look at the range!
Volcanic sand gave way to orange-red dirt paths. Apparently, something like 10,000 pounds of sand from Haleakala are discovered by TSA and have to be shipped back to the park each year.
THIS CAMERA HAS THE RANGE, PEOPLE! If you've been saving for years, scouring eBay for months, and have put aside money for a wise financial investment into a new camera, this is your sign to do itttttt.
Look at those people! Look!! The lens is crazy.
Literally love this camera.
Over my left shoulder you can see the trail, some ~9 miles away continues...
All about those trail shots.
Some views really just felt other-worldly.
This funny guy popped up out of nowhere on our hike--no trees nearby, no noise as he and his friend approached. The Alectoris chukar is apparently an Asian partridge known for its "chuck-chuck" sound, hence the onomatopoeic name.
After we finished our hike in Haleakala, we decided to head towards Hana again. It was mid-afternoon and we knew we could get to the Red Sand Beach just on time for sunset. Spoiler: we didn't read enough before hand to know how exactly to access the red sand beach, and missed the whole point of it. This is where most readers might realize the oxygen and sun had gotten to us: after getting up early to paraglide, then taking the heat of the day to hike a literal desert, we only considered the treacherous drive OUT to Hana. We didn't think about driving the road to Hana BACK to Kihei. Having done the whole trip once at this point, we knew the south side would take longer and with the dark of night upon us, we felt more confident we wouldn't fall off the road into the ocean taking the north side of the island. The north side is notably more windy, but more in rainforests than the south side, which had less treated roads.
Have I mentioned that I love this camera?
South side Hana Highway things.
Sun setting on the misty dock on the flipside of the Red Sand Beach.
Back side of the Red Sand Beach. Had we done our homework before arrival we would've realized we were basically at the right spot, but needed 15-20 minutes to hike what would've been just to the right of what's framed here.
I mean, this doesn't even look real? Pretty sure I took this from a moving car, anyways.
Just random coves on the southeast side of Maui. Casually looking like this with no one hanging out near them.
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