Travel photography, Hawaii, Paia and the north coast of Maui
I am determined to finish my Hawaii blog posts before the one year anniversary of our trip! 🙂  I have a serious photo backlog problem when it comes to my own personal photos!  We started our trip last March on the Big Island, which I posted about here and here.  We then flew to Maui for the 2nd week of our trip, and started the first half of the week on the north coast, with a home base in Paia.  Paia is a surfer town, with lovely little restaurants and shops and a really laid-back, yet refined, attitude.  It was a bit drizzly during our time there and the surf was so high it wasn’t safe to swim, but that really added to the atmosphere of this wilder side of the island.  It’s the home of some serious surfing competitions and given the waves we saw, we’re not surprised.  We spent one day driving the road to Hana, a 60 mile trip that takes all day because it is just one hairpin turn after another (the boys were counting at first but stopped at about 156…we probably drove over 400 of them!).  It’s so fun to stop along the way to explore a rugged patch of coastline or admire a waterfall or two.  At the end of the ride, before heading back, we spent some time running away from monster waves at a beach, and visiting the section of Haleakala National Park with the Seven Sacred Pools (seven waterfalls, each with its own bit of pool, eventually leading to the open ocean).  I loved this part of Maui.  Its wilderness and laid-back charm definitely spoke to me :).
