I also went snorkeling at the Molokini Crater with a local boat tour, but my favorite activity has to be the Haleakala Sunrise Tour and Bike ride. As you can imagine, this meant that I had to get up at an ungodly hour, 2am, to drive to the tour company office where a group of us filed onto a bus. They drove us up the mountain to the rim of the volcano, where the idea is that we would be able to watch the sunrise over the crater. However, to our dismay, on that particular morning, the fog was so thick and unrelenting that we were not able to see 10 feet in front of us, let alone the sunrise. I was pretty bummed at first, but on my way out, I heard another visitor say, “it’s not where you go, it’s how you get there”, or something to that effect, and it was absolutely true. The dark and winding drive up the mountain with a bunch of strangers in the middle of the night, accompanied by the local driver’s colorful commentary, brought me to a landscape and environment unlike anywhere I had ever been. To stand at the edge of a precipice, with the wind howling all around you, the air dense with mist, looking down at a mysterious void, was utterly intoxicating. I felt like I was on another planet and completely forgot about the original goal to see a beautiful sunrise. Despite the cold, I was reluctant to leave, but hurried back to the bus where sure enough, I was the last one.
And I was about to experience another type of high. After we all got back on the bus, we drove a little way down the mountain to a point where we all disembarked, received our bicycles and helmets, and prepared for a wet and “go at your own pace” ride back to the tour office. There were three of us who were on our own, and whether it was a symptom or a sign of our independent state, we bombed down that mountain. In retrospect, such a high speed was probably ill-advised since it was pretty wet and there are some cars driving on that road, but that ride was my absolute favorite experience of the trip.
