If you're looking to get away from the more built up, luxury areas of Maui, head to Paella,
the small coastal village on the northern coast of Maui.
This town only has about 2600 people, so it's got a great lay back, hippie-ish feel, tons
of little shops, restaurants, cafes, other things that I can't recommend on video, but
check it out.
In fact, two of Paella's most famous residents are Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson.
I wonder why.
I wanted to try one of Hawaii's favorite breakfast meals, the loco moco.
I got a tip that one of the best places to try it is at the Moana Bay Green Cafe, right
here off of Baldwin Avenue.
This is Hawaii's favorite pork stopping breakfast, the loco moco.
It's an addition that consists of rice, a hamburger patty, egg, brown gravy, all mixed
together in one.
It's not my usual breakfast, but amazing, really, really good.
So when I was in Paella, I started talking to one of the shop clerks, and I told her
I only had a couple of hours to explore because I had to pick up my deadbeat friends from
the airport a couple hours.
And she suggested I head up the Hana Highway to Twin Falls, which is a nice little trail
on the waterfall that you can jump into at the end.
Good thing I brought my bathing suit, otherwise they'd be going on the troll.
And last time I did that, I got kicked out of the country.
So it's good for everybody.
This may be a good time to talk about Maui's terrain.
You see, given such factors as wildly changing elevation and the trade winds from the northeast,
the island has a number of microclimates, and despite what you may have thought, much
of the island is actually very dry and sunny, receiving less than 10 inches of rain per
year.
On the other hand, this portion, along the northeast coastline, and which includes the
famed Hana Highway, receives anywhere from 80 to 400 inches a year, thus the Jurassic
Park-like surroundings and the tropical waterfalls.
If you haven't noticed already, I'm sporting a very stylish waterproof camera for portions
of this trip, all in an effort to get some of the two of this underwater shots, and so
I can give you, the viewer, an idea of what it's like for all the people in the water
here.
In this case, surprisingly cold, but it's also a great excuse for mid-morning bath courtesy
of nature.
Now where did they keep the soap dispenser?
After picking up my friends, I figured what better way to introduce them to the island
than I already had some time to explore than to shuttle them back into the air and into
a helicopter for an aerial tour of Maui and neighboring Molokaii, the fifth largest of
the Hawaiian islands.
Yes, at that Molokaii, the one time home to the famous Leopard Colony, a disease that
came to the island in the mid-1850s through the influx of outside traders and sailors.
Today as you fly over the eastern portion of the island, you can see the original settlement
that was home to victims through the 1960s.
Further along, we choppered over the lush landscape and grazed the dramatic cliff sides
of the island.
Formed by two shield volcanoes, the dramatic sea cliffs, the largest in the world, are
what remains of a massive volcano that collapsed over one and a half million years ago.
It was at this point that I implored our pilot to get as close as possible so I get my epic
money shot, a request that was soundly ignored.
After doubling back and climbing over the center of the island, we began our approach
toward Maui from the northwest.
It's over this portion of the ocean that an estimated two-thirds of the entire North
Pacific humpback whale population travels to each winter to get it on, kind of like
spring break for sea life, and ultimately to give birth to calves.
Finally we made our way over Lahaina and back to the heliport, surprisingly with all our
lunches firmly still in our stomachs.
