Maui Attractions

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Last part of all the Hawaii stuff: The non-bike things on Maui. Includes sweet snorkel video at the end, stay tuned!

Kula Botanical Garden

I stopped here on my scuttled east loop attempt, before doing Waipoli road. Just saw it on Googlemaps so hey, why not stop. There’s no way to get here without a car otherwise and the lady assured me my bike would be safe while I walked around. Also needed water of course.

It's not very large and is family-owned. But it's densely packed with lots to see! Koi pond / Japanese garden here.

Hey it's one of those dragon trees from the Canary Islands!

They have a few Jackson chameleons in a little cage but apparently you can find these in the wild here. Good luck though...

Gives you a good idea of how this place is. Really dense and tropical.

A few birds in their aviary too. Why not.

Don't know what's going on with this tree trunk here.

Leave you with some huge flowers. I assume there's something flowering at all times in Hawaii. This is THE WINTER...

Maui Ocean Center

This is the most “an actual thing” of the gardens/museums around Maui. Pretty pricey at 55$ for what it is though. I give it 3/5.

The one great thing on Maui is there's actual bus stops. Crazy! The bus is a convenient way to get to most places tourists would want to go. Also have bike rack at the front.

Got there bright and early to do snorkeling later. It gets hot as balls in Maui.

100% accurate Monk Seal representation.

I think it's one of those bottom-feeding fish that cleans the aquarium. Pretty cool. Might be a huge sea cucumber also? Plaque didn't say.

The main draw is a huge "deep water" tank with a bunch of sharks, rays and huge fish.

Whatever these are, they're like 4 foot long.

There's lots of seating area for you to chill and watch fish go by.

Few tunnel sections, as you do.

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There's a few tanks outside with local reef fish.

Huge blowfish. Haha look at this guy. He's awesome.

They have a hands-on tank as well where you can stroke your cucumber and pet your starfish.

Green sea turtle aquarium.

My best picture of the trip? Possibly.

Included with your ticket is a little 15 minute movie about humpbacks in the whale sphere

It's a 3D movie on a curved screen. Was kind of low budget, basically just a rotating 3D model of the same whale for 15 minutes.

My pictures are showing you maybe 20% of the Aquarium. You can see just about every fish that lives in Hawaii!

These little cleaner shrimp are pretty cool.

Kid watching the unicorn fish. Those are pretty bizarre! Imagine a narwhal, but in the water!

I don't know why but any time there's lobsters in aquariums I just think about eating them. None of the other animals, just the lobsters. You're welcome for this information.

Hipster surfer stuff. Did I mention there's a lot of places to blow your money on overpriced tourist stuff in Hawaii? lol

Kind of came upon this place while doing the Road to Hana ride. You never know what to expect ( because you’re lazy and don’t Google yes ) so it was nice to find out I could hike this in my bike shoes and the lady would make sure no miscreants stole my precious BICE.

It's about a half mile out-and-back and they give you a flashlight because otherwise it's complete darkness.

You can only explore a small portion of the actual cave. It's the largest lava cave on Maui and the 18th largest in the world.

That glowy stuff that looks like gold is just bacteria.

It's actually a huge cave with tons of different textures all over the walls from all sorts of lava-related events.

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There's a room called the "chocolate room" with all these smooth pudding-like lumps from floor to ceiling.

I dunno, pretty cool. 15 bucks. Glad I stopped by instead of buying a stupid coconut at a fruit stand.

Snorkeling

I went to a few different beaches on 2 separate occasions to try this much-vaunted “Snork’e-e-lin’g” everyone’s raving about. The good beaches during this season are located on the west side and it took like 2 hours of bus each way to get to them. Brutal. Maybe one instance where a car would have made sense ( just kidding fuck that ).

Anyway here’s the video:

Napili Beach. Huge and very nice beach for swimmers and sunbathers. All of these beaches are blocked off by resorts but it turns out in Hawaii every beach is public, they can’t keep you off them and there’s alway some beach access. Felt like a king as I blended in with the local tourists who were staying at the expensive resorts. I’M JUST A BUM HAHAHA. I BUSED HERE. THERE’S METHHEADS SCREAMING 50 FEET FROM MY AIRBNB… oh…

Honokeana Bay. That was the best spot by far. Saw an octopus and tons of turtles here.

As I said the bus takes 2 hours to reach the very northernmost peak of West Maui, so I’d come back around sunset from these long-ass snorkel days. But damn isn’t that an awesome sight?

I kept track of expenses, as I do. Not so bad for one of the most expensive places on earth! Groceries is just a bit more than I’d have spent anyway and the car rental was a total waste of time and money, 300$+ there instead of the Ubers.

It’s kind of interesting to keep a “cost per day” log of trips. I LIKE IT.

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