Navigating the Road to Hana in a Camper Van // Maui Van Life

last week we peeled back the curtain and gave you a real-life tour of the ups and downs of living in a class b van this week we wrap up our time in the camper van in one of the top locations in all of hawaii the road to hana the road to hana is breathtakingly beautiful with sites we have never experienced bamboo forests black sand beaches and waterfalls however tight roads one finger shakkas okay that was intense and a sense of tension between some locals and tourists and there were some choice words we've never had a knock on the door from the police asking us to leave have us wondering how long we should stick around this incredible piece of hawaii we're marissa nathan hensley and jj after living in our rv for six years we're taking a 10-week adventure detour to visit our 50th state of hawaii life is a journey let go and get going so when you hear about road to hana it's very iconic maui it is this journey with all these stops along the way and essentially you're on your way to hana so we have the gypsy guide you definitely want to get an app that along the way tells you all the stops gives you all the history it's like a driving tour soon we'll begin the fun part of the road to hana hana is not about actually getting to hana although yes we want to get to hana we're excited to explore hana but it's about the journey the adventure all the amazing stops and turns along the way and there are a lot of turns and a lot of waterfalls coming up all right it's exciting here we go the road to hana let's do this [Music] did you know there are 620 curves on the road to hana no and i thought i heard there's like 40 something bridges so i get to do that bridges okay so i get to do that 58 more times yes like a one-way bridge so the road to hana takes just a couple hours but because you have so many stops it's an all day adventure it's a lot of curves look at this road we got coming up oh boy here we go another suggestion we'll see a lot more action like this as we get further along if you're susceptible to motion sickness i suggest two things take a turn at being the driver that's pretty much what we've done the whole time marissa is um already feeling sick we're trying to load up on drugs before you go our first stop on the road to hana is the arboretum did i say that right how do you say it a burrito yeah what she said so this is a free attraction but according to our gypsy guide this is a must stop to go all the way back there okay can you help me find it you found them look at these trees wow that's amazing look at these colors you gonna show it to me look someone wrote they do not carve on trees isn't that incredible this is a rainbow eucalyptus look at these colors i feel like i am in another world right now these are something special aren't they that is a very interesting flower what's this one called hensley lobster claw hensley knows all the plants i just asked her wow look at that bamboo oh it's a mangrove some kind of mango it does look like a mangrove tree you're right who's your [Music] teacher [Music] so [Music] this is stunning wow this is the lava from the volcano yeah from holly aquila this is hardened lava and you've got these huge crashing waves coming up over it can you believe this [Music] all right so it is dinner time this is one of the coolest things about having one of these bad boys is you can pull off and have dinner reviews like this are you excited about dinner you're having popcorn i mean i tried your dinner dinner he wanted popcorn hensley wanted taco bowl that's about typical dinner for us you wanna spit it out okay it's a fun story it is actually very very difficult to find places to stay in a camper van or anything around the road to hana so we had uh some friends we talked to tell us had a place for us to stay we came i don't know a mile mile and a half up this road and they said oh there's a sign that says four wheel drive only but you can make it across just keep coming up to our land this is what we were supposed to come across was this goalie with these vans it doesn't matter we can't get there so i don't know what we're going to do we talk to them and say well where else can we go because it's about to start getting dark we're in no man's land we just we just need a flat play stuff we don't need hookups anything we just want a flat place to park we're heading down the mountain i don't know i don't know what the plan is we'll see what happens next somebody's coming all right well we're turning around we ran into a local that was going into the driveway we were trying to get into and with this four-wheel drive truck yeah and he's like yeah yeah he's like you ain't gonna go get up there which we knew we weren't gonna do that so we asked him if he knew anywhere flat we could park tonight since we have struck out there are very few hip camps well we found a hip camp we're at tomorrow night but we have nothing tonight and this was our plan the friend that knew a friend that knew a friend yeah oh man it's part of the journey well i think we found out we took a wrong turn somewhere yeah it was probably our fault i don't it's dark it's raining we got no food we got no jobs our pets heads are falling off we're in the like hawaiian jungle coming down this mountain right now the true hawaiian experience so he told us but you never know when you're here for one person says well i've seen people camping there before but he said go down to the beach so we're gonna go to coqui beach park is where he said to go and he said we should be fine so he said he never heard of anybody being chased off say a prayer for us a minute to our next spot i can hear the ocean we're just ready to get some sleep man just tired you're not seeing it but this this video actually ties into our other video nobody cares about that i've been up since 3am so i'm pretty tired get some sleep two hours later so for the first time ever we just got a knock on our door in the rv waking us up in the van it was the cops saying you can't be camping here we didn't want to be camping here we didn't mean to be camping here and we honestly we honestly don't even know where to go [Music] wow so yesterday yesterday was a very challenging day we thought we had it covered because we had somewhere to park but the gps just did not take us there we got lost and we were just so tired last night nathan and i have been rving this is the start of our seventh year and we've never had a knock on the door from the police asking us to leave and it's kind of a rod of passage of rving i think at some point it's gonna happen at some point you're in a park somewhere you didn't know you weren't supposed to be and last night when we come down and parked at the beach like the local had recommended we were worried we thought you know is this okay is it not okay we're just going by a local recommendation and um for the first time we got that 1am knock on the door of what every rver does not want to hear the knock followed by the word police and so that's a very startling way to wake up at 1am they were super kind we told them our story we told them that we had another plan we got lost we couldn't find where we were supposed to park and that we were not trying to camp on the beach we just had nowhere else to go and if they had somewhere else for us to park we would we would graciously go anywhere they told us to go but they were super kind and he said you can stay here for the night but at 5am set your alarm be outside and be walking around and not be sleeping because you can't sleep at the beach so just be up and go watch the sunrise so this morning i watched an amazing mandated by the police sunrise i've never watched a mandated sunrise i've watched three sunrises in a row guys that's a record for me hi you want up here too good morning this is what makes it worth it right no this is hard to address but we some locals i think are excited about tourism um they're good with it's a way of making money it's a way for them to diversify it's way for them to meet new people but then some locals um because this is a very diverse culture with a very different history than any other state in the united states some of the locals who have a history of being here in their family possibly hundreds of years um you know they're not as crazy about the new tourists taking the spots blocking the traffic on the road to hana um you know making it and and justifiably so i think and we try to put ourselves in the position of locals too if you've been here for hundreds of years and like all of a sudden new people are coming in and you can't get to and from work because it's narrow roads or you can't park where you used to park next to the beach because someone's in your spot it's there's just there's a tension there and so it's common courtesy on the road to hana especially where you've got these narrow windy curvy one-lane bridge roads you use these small pull-offs because we're facing we probably got bigger vehicles we're not driving as fast i mean they're trying to get to work they're trying to shop they're trying to do the things that they need to be doing on their everyday life and so you're constantly watching to try to pull off on the side of the road for the locals to be able to get around you and get to where they need to go you know five six seven different times we did that and the locals do like a friendly little honk and they'll wave but then one time i had to come around a blind corner and i was committed and i had people behind me can they go she said she can't go and we're in this van right and there was another tour bus it was just a van it was like a even bigger than this coming around and we both could not pass at the same time so i had to stop i had to back up a little bit sort of edge off the road just a little bit so they could get by is it always the case now this is not a must-do but if we're enthusiastic are on the right side i don't know what's around the corner it turns out it's about 15 people wow yeah there was no yield sign there's nothing you're just coming around and it's like oh who's gonna who's gonna stop and the whole time there's a local behind me just honking the horn screaming just screaming things out i don't know if i've ever had screamed at me before um while we're sitting there trying to let traffic get by us on this tiny little road then once i got by we continued on as soon as i saw my first pull-off i pulled off on the side of the road to let the local go and you know they continue to scream things at us and i don't know what you call this the upside down aloha they gave us the one finger wave as they went by screaming things at us that was intense i didn't know what just happened and there were some choice words because that that tour van was as big as we were so wow yeah i don't even know ridiculous i don't even know what to say it's hard for me to bring that up because i know you can't let what i hope is a small percentage represent the whole because as a whole we've had a very good experience here um super friendly super courteous lending us things telling us where to go offering places for us to stay like we have really really we do we love and respect the cultures we visit in but at the same time you do need to be aware sometimes there's some tension there [Music] [Music] ready buddy no wow check this out [Music] it's cold refreshing nobody in there has to go you probably can't just look cleaner now i should have brought a bar of soap or something i've seen pictures of this place and it's always crowded so the fact that i could swim this all alone at that waterfall that's why i jumped in look at this my first waterfall in hawaii i've like got to myself they're usually so packed so haleakala national park you can get to from two entrances one is from the top where we viewed sunrise and the second entrance is going past hana so after you go past hana about 45 more minutes you'll arrive in this entrance at the national park and what's cool here is you got these two trails this one goes down to the seven sacred pools in the pipiwa trail goes through a bamboo forest is one of the most popular trails in hawaii ready buddy yeah this let's go let's go let's go jj's taking a break where's jj hey you found me you tree hugger [Music] this is stunning so they nicknamed these the seven sacred pools but it was just to get taurus to keep following the road to hana and come down there's actually like a dozen of them but you can swim in these but it's very rare that the water level is open enough that you can swim in the pools it's just stunning here it is make some wow now that's a climate drink i've ever seen look at that you think there's a panda in here maybe i i said they should put a pen in there why don't you need a panda can you put their nail on it no it's poisonous this is cool wow look at all the bamboo it's really something man okay this is super cool i feel like you could just like live in here [Music] i think one of my favorite things about this is just the noise of the bamboo like banging against each other i mean it's a whole different environment nothing we've ever seen you're talking half a mile of this plus we're not even to the end of it yet it's a lot of bamboo and there's a lot of bamboo hensley yeah i hope there's a panda in here yeah we're still watching for that panda aren't we no panda yet it's like the bamboos making music as you hike through and it's shaded oh wow it's incredible kinsley really wants a panda in here hey hensley i bet if you put it in the suggestion box at the national park maybe they'll put a panda in that has to be the biggest oh wow oh my goodness that's impressive oh my goodness look at that wow i think when you think of hawaii this is like the vision you have this is true hawaii that's incredible you say bye-bye waterfall bye-bye waterfall so last night when we went through the peninsula there's sandy's there that's a really famous banana bread stock she was closed and we missed it thank goodness our friends down to detour thank you guys that we're traveling with they went back this morning and picked us up a loaf so we're gonna have to dig into this and let you know if the banana bread is as good as they say it is here we come that's so people know we're coming around the corner and said to blow our horns so he can drive oh tons of room on this one we're good we'll go oh what about that one [Laughter] i can't actually taste it i'm focusing on not dying what's good my mom she makes really good banana bread it's hard to compete with hers my mom always says because hers is made with love so didn't she say the secret ingredient was just sugar love oh secret ingredient is love nathan and probably probably a little sugar i love you mom i love your banana bread [Music] after yesterday's adventure it feels so good to have our home parked for the next two nights at least 50 bucks a night for a flat piece of land but uh we'll take it we'll take it [Laughter] this is super cool how about we go put my head under that do it three oh it's going to work better than nothing or when i've had nothing for four days it's better than that you gonna take a shower in there he takes your breath it takes my breath away dude it's cold i guess i could just turn it on less right instead of just like full blood oh wow there's an adjustment yeah why didn't i think of that we're doing what we're pretty sure hardly anybody if anybody ever does we are actually leaving the road to hana and hana early um we plan to stay here three nights four days this is hard because we're the kind of people like we're picking up trash around the parks when we go to them we're not carving on the trees we're not damaging things i mean we're trying to we are trying to follow the rules we want to learn about the area and we want to share that with you guys because i think there is something beautiful about everywhere um and we want to do that in a respectful way the last 48 hours we were honked at by the local behind us we were flipped off by this they stuck their head out the window and screamed about how they felt about us we also had another local scream at us because it was a tight road and the traffic was stuck we have had the cops called on us while we went to a beach that we're told about local was okay to go to this morning we left our camp spot we did not have cell service and we had to get a video up this week and finish our work so we just drove into town to try to um try to use our own internet we have a hot spot that we we use we just needed cell service so we pulled off in an empty parking lot and we got a little chastised by a local that just felt like they thought we had spent the night in the parking lot it was around 7 00 a.m and we were just trying to get a little work done before we started exploring for the day and yeah she wasn't happy about us us parking and felt like we had stayed the night there and i assured her that we had a camp um a camp spot and she told us that um you know that she had tagged us by the police and it's been there like 10 minutes and lisa was going to go walk to the grocery store that was next to it and i mean we weren't we don't want to stay there any longer we have to i mean we're we're really trying hannah i mean um we're really trying hannah is absolutely beautiful gorgeous we've had a wonderful experience um exploring hana but i think the vibe we're getting is um explore hana and then just get out move on we've never felt that anywhere though so it's so many firsts in this video so we're moving on we're heading back to the other side of hana and we've still got a couple of pretty awesome things to show you guys along the way this state park is very known for its black sand beach it's incredibly beautiful and honestly say i've never seen or experienced anything like this black sand beach look at this look how crazy this is awesome a sand angel you do a sanding that's why you get this stuff all over you get hands late today shoulder hey hensley you gonna do a sand angel there you go can't really see it man this is incredible loving this rock this beach a black sand beach is because it's crushed volcanic drop but what's really cool about it they say it only took a few weeks for this black sand to actually be broken up and formed but one day they think that this speech is going to be gone and it's going to be washed away enjoy things while you can you never know how things in nature are gonna change and that's what we've learned from traveling too is what was available at one time could be totally unavailable at a different time an airstream in maui my wheels are turning because i'm like how did that airstream get on this island and down this windy one-lane road how's it been driving the camper van on road to hana number one skill um i think for driving this is depth perception so like if you're constantly find yourself thinking you've got room to pull out in front of people in town you're like people are getting on your tail and you're like oh man i thought i had way more room than that or if you're like constantly waiting because you're afraid to pull out in front of traffic because you just can't tell like you've got to be able to have good depth perception of where the railing is how fast you're going how fast they're going where you're out on the road like it's uh i think that's that's what miss was looking she's like holding on to the side sometimes thinking i'm gonna hit something my depth perception is is not there yet i don't know if that's something you just have you can learn that perception is not my thing when it comes to rv officially made it off road to hana although we felt some tension in hana we feel like it's well worth it to rv hawaii if you want to see more of what that rving adventure was like we put together a custom four video playlist just for you

Channel: Less Junk, More Journey

Views: 70,142

Rating: 4.9389248 out of 5

Keywords: full time rv, rv, rv living, rving, hensley and jj, how to rv, camping, camper, full time rving, rv life, rving with kids, travel vlog, less junk more journey, less junk more travel, best rv youtube channel, rv living with kids, road to hana, road to hana maui, pipiwai trail, maui hawaii, bamboo forest, maui travel, van life, hawaii van life, campervan hawaii, maui rv rental, van life maui

Id: My0OhzAGTOc

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 25 2021