Hawaii
Trip 2006Hawaii
Trip 2006We ate two apple bananas, a leftover lima bean manju, and a freshly cut li hing mui (passion fruit) in the room for breakfast. Then at 7:00 we left the room and drove straight back to Home Maid Bakery in Wailuku on Lower Main Street to get more mochi—this time we got more of the steamed chi chi dango mochi and also some steamed ube (purple yam) mochi and chocolate butter mochi (much more airy and less dense than the vanilla butter mochi).
Thus fortified, we drove straight to the top of Haleakala National Park; the windy road to its 10,000-foot summit holds the record, I read, for the highest elevation change in shortest distance (22 miles); at the very top, we got out and walked around a little, then drove down to the visitors’ center, always avoiding the insane bikers, who get driven to the top in vans and then bike down very shakily and dangerously. I have to say that the bikers probably weren’t in as much danger as the teenage boy whose family decided to let him skateboard down the mountain in front of their car. It’s a two-lane road, which in some places goes down to one lane, and which almost never has any guard rails on the edges—just a sheer drop down. We got out and stopped at two overlooks, taking a very short hike over to the edge of the crater at Leleiwi Overlook. Interestingly, we learned that Haleakala is not really a crater, but rather it was formed when multiple valleys formed by water, rain, wind, or glaciers came together, carving a big depression in the middle of the shield volcano, and then new cone volcanoes formed inside the depression. We love these beautiful, shaded non-class-M landscapes, and we’ve been to them all over the country. Here, it’s so unearthly that NASA actually trained the astronauts for the lunar landing here.
Along our walks, we saw lots of little birds native to this area; after half-reading an informative sign about them, Robert referred to them as the rumpled plover, but I think they were actually dark-rumped petrels.
With the sun now high in the sky, and the wind dying down a little, we drove down the mountain and went to Sunrise Protea Farm and Market in Kula (right at the food of the crater road). It’s a great stand run by a friendly woman, and we bought locally made passion fruit fudge (year 8, baby, the year of fudge), more coconut candy, and kettle corn coated with li hing mui powder. The kettle corn sent me over the edge—already salty and sweet, and now even more salty, more sweet, and some sour! Delicious! While eating the popcorn, we walked through their garden of proteas and admired the flowers.
Next, with only one wrong turn, we went to Surfing Goat Dairy for the basic tour, which cost $15 for up to three people (Robert was unhappy by their pricing model, since it was us and another two families on a single tour). You got to see the goats, the goat-herding dogs, the main Billy goat who’s kept apart from the others, the friendly dogs and cats who are everywhere, and the pot-bellied pig who wanders around and is supposedly friendly (I didn’t get too close, though). Robert fed the goats enthusiastically, and then we saw the whole milking and pasteurization area, before retreating into a little beach-like shack where, surreally enough, the Beach Boys Christmas album was playing, for samples of their different prize-winning cheeses. The Mandalay spread, made with local apple bananas and curry powder, was my favorite. Robert and I ordered a croissant panini made with their fresh goat cheese (less than 48 hours from milking the goat to your sandwich), smoked salmon, and sliced sweet Maui onions, along with a fresh lemonade with Maui cane sugar. All in all it was a very nice, fun, laid-back place.
As always, we drove back toward the sugar mill in the center of Maui and then down to Kamaole Beach Park III in Kihei, which was said to be a good swimming beach. Indeed, it had nice warm water and pretty rocks. We got to the beach at 2:00 and we stayed until a quarter to four, walking on the beach, lying down dozing, and then going back in the water. Some boys said there was good snorkeling a ways out, but Robert didn’t put on his fins. The water wasn’t super calm, but it was calm enough that Robert could actually swim, and I dabbled, as I usually do.
Haliimaile
General StoreWe headed back to the hotel to de-sand ourselves and change, and then went out again for a 6:30 dinner reservation at Haliimaile General Store, Bev Gannon’s main restaurant; Bev is one of the twelve founding chefs of the 1992 Hawaiian Regional Cuisine movement, and I’d been wanting to go to her place. We got there early—there was a very beautiful sunset as we were driving over, with great clouds—and the restaurant was in the middle of nowhere, but fairly easy to find.
At right, the sugar mill, which (of course) we had to drive past again to get to the restaurant. No one on Maui seems overly concerned about pollution, interestingly enough.
Once at the restaurant, the service was excellent, and we had a nice quiet table at the back. Bev was there that night, overseeing things, and actually autographing 4 dozen or so of her cookbooks at a nearby table. She heard me “mmm!” over the meal, and then she autographed a cookbook especially for me (it was a 20th, so Robert said to think of the book as a combination 20th and Christmas present, which was fine with me).
Our appetizers were a tuna sashimi pizza (crisp flatbread crust, mashed edamame “hummus,” crispy fried onions, tuna sashimi, lovely creamy onion-sesame sauce—fabulous!) and a scallop and shrimp dynamite on baked oysters—very good, not at all what we think of as a “dynamite” normally, since it wasn’t heavy on the mayo.
Next, the main courses were an uku in onion crust with tamarind sauce on rice with garlicky greens (the waiter, when Robert asked how he liked uku, a grey snapper Robert was prepared to defame, was extremely enthusiastic: “Oh cool, uku man, neat, wow, it’s a great mid-swimming fish”) and a mahi mahi with mac nut crust and mango salsa on mashed purple yam (ube) with mango butter sauce—the mango sauce in particular was simply heavenly.
Our desserts were a lilikoi-glazed cheesecake, which was pleasant, and a lilikoi creme brulee in mac-nut brittle cup with fresh fruit; the creme brulee was very very good—not as firm as most creme brulees, and clearly made in another pan, then scooped into the cup and bruleed with a torch; our waiter, of course, again had an opinion on which of the two desserts was stronger in terms of lilikoi flavor, but we like waiters who are full of character, so we didn’t mind.
After dinner, we admired the stars above and the lights on Maui, and we walked through the Maui Mall in Kahului, where we sampled guri-guri (a Philipino ice-cream-like sherbet-like dessert, available in two scoops—one or both of pineapple and strawberry flavors—for $1) and then strolled through the open-air mall on our last evening in Maui. Actually, I wasn’t that crazy about the guri-guri, or the goodie-goodie, as it’s called in local patois, but the stall has a long history and people rave about it. Robert observed that anything for $1 is a great deal today, so he seemed happy.
Below, one odd thing we saw in our drive around today--why would a child want free gas for good grades? It baffled us.
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Created: 12/26/06. Last Modified: 12/26/06