One week on Maui and one week on Kauai. My suggestion is that you don’t plan less than a week per island. We started the trip off with a bang. We biked down the Haleakala volcano. The this works is that the tour company picks you up at 3 to 4 AM and transports you to the top of the 10,000 foot Haleakala crater. This sounds brutal, however, the reason we did it the first night in Hawaii is that coming from the Eastern time zone meant that 3AM felt like 8AM to us !! Perfect.
The thing we didn’t plan on was the night sky at 10,000 feet . That alone was worth the price of admission. I can’t describe it without using superfluous adjectives. You will have to experience it yourself to believe it.
The biking part of the experience starts after you stand on the edge of the crater for the legendary sunrise over Haleakala. If the sky is clear, it won’t be very exciting, if it is cloudy, it is supposed to be spectacular. In case you couldn’t guess, it was clear the day we were there.
Ok, Ok, let’s talk biking. I couldn’t talk my wife and friends into taking the back of the mountain trail down by mountain bike. It sounds pretty darn exciting. However, we did the mainstream route which wasn’t half bad. You go down 10,000 feet to the sea spread out over 40 miles and 2 or 3 hours. There Is very little pedaling, but lots of braking. You don’t have to be a highly skilled biker, but you should be comfortable on a bike, since you will be cruising downhill at 15 miles per hour and negotiating curves continually. Because you are winding back and forth down the mountain, the view is perpetually changing and always breathtaking. Part of the deal is a stop in a the village of _____ for a great breakfast before you finish out the trip. It was a bit tight, time wise getting back to the hotel in time to catch a ride to the airport for our puddle jump to Kauai. This produced a little unnecessary anxiety to our vacation day, but we ended up making the flight, no problem.