Hawaii: Maui Gold (10.28.25)

From early morning to sunset, on October 28, 2025, we tasted the best Maui had to offer.

Our condo was right on the beach, with a view of the ocean out our fourth story windows.

Dave and I took a morning stroll past the beach and along a frontage road into a middle class neighborhood, just to see how regular people lived.

Hawaii has quite a few unattended fruit stands, like this one, which encouraged passersby to tuck some money in the box and take home a coconut!

There are so many flowers in Hawaii.  This one takes me right back to my days as a little girl in Burma.  Bushes with "cups of gold" grew in our yard.

As we walked past this VFW post, I thought of how militarized Hawaii was during World War II.  My friend, Marilyn Phillips, was a child sitting the front steps of her home on December 7, 2041, when she saw planes with the Japanese star painted on them flying over.  They were headed for Pearl Harbor.

There was something so ordinary about this wood house with its breezeway and car underneath.  What is extraordinary is to imagine the exotic tropical sights this family could visit with its boat!

We continued our pilgrimage to Hawaiian farms with a pineapple tour.  The Maui Gold factory can't make money by sending its pineapples to the mainland, since its prices are undercut by farms in Costa Rica.  It can produce extra sweet, premium pineapples for sale in Hawaii.  "Each pineapple costs us $2 to produce.  We have to remember that," our guide told us.

Newly harvested pineapples are dipped in disinfected and then receive a thin coat of edible wax to protect their freshness.

They are then boxed and shipped.  

Dave and I received two Maui Gold pineapples as part of our entrance fee.  We had never tasted such sweet pineapples.

Our tour van rolled into the field, where we saw several stages of pineapple planting, growth, and harvesting.  Maui Gold rotates its fields so that they can produce new crops of pineapples each month, all year.

Pineapples are planted by hand, since there is no machine yet that can put the pineapple tops into the ground at just the right angle.

Planters are paid, based on how many pineapples they can plant in a day.  

Our guide picked a pineapple from the field, peeled it with a couple of strokes of his machete, and served it to us.  Perfect!

The Maui Gold farm was upcountry, on the side of Haleakala volcano.  We kept driving up and up and up, to Haleakala's10,000 foot crest.

It was otherworldly, looking down on the clouds.

An observatory topped one of the volcanic peaks.

From outlooks on the road to Haleakala, we could see all the way to the ocean.

We took a sailboat ride to see the sunset over the sea.

Hawaii: Road to Hana (10.27.25)

The road to Hana from central Maui is only some 70 miles long, but the drive is memorable.  The road snakes and narrows past waterfalls, tropical gardens, roadside stands selling fresh fruit and banana bread, and gorgeous overlooks of the sea. Cars have to pull out onto the very narrow shoulder when passing another bus or car. On October 27, 2025, we drove the road to Hana, with its lush bushes, flowers, and trees, and then circled back over the drought-ravaged side of Maui's volcano.
 

We knew we were entering the small, isolated town of Hana when we began seeing funky cafes and B&Bs.

 I finally succumbed to all the ads for banana bread!

Hawaii: Iao and a Chicken Dinner (10.26.25)

We arrived in Maui on October 24, 2025.  The most iconic site on Maui is the mountain obelisk at Iao State Park.  Iao includes a canyon where King Kamehameha fought one of the bloodiest and most important battles in his quest to unify Hawaii.  Today it is popular place to wander.

A pickup truck pulled up next to us in the Iao State Park parking lot.  Two strapping Polynesian teenagers rode in the back of the truck.  They went for a swim in the waterfalls of the park.  When this young guy saw me taking a picture, he flexed his muscles for my benefit!

This seemed to me to be the park's highest and best use--for the island's teenagers to climb, swim, and lounge about in.

For dinner, I looked up a highly rated restaurant on Google Maps. I didn't realize it was a food truck until we got there!

The food truck offered a wide selection of Hawaiian "plates", with entrees ranging from Spam to coconut fried shrimp (my choice)

The plate included turmeric rice, purple yam salad, and a green salad.  And, of course, the omnipresent "POG", a passion fruit, guava, and orange juice blend.  The ambience wasn't great, since we sat at a plastic table on gravel, but the food was delicious!

Chickens wandered around our feet and even jumped up on the table!