Two days ago (April 8), we took a jaunt to Makawao, the "Ocean Beach" of Maui, tucked into the foothills of Haleakala volcanic crater in the central part of the island. Makawao, which bills itself as the "historic" and "cowboy" town of Maui, is the site of La Jolla coach Dave Jones' volleyball jaunts with the team to Seabury Hall, a private school that plays the Vikings on their Hawaii trips.
Makawao is a trippy 60's type of locale, much like OB, with a whiff of affluence underlying it. We walked by the Makawao Public Library (the only place with books that we found in our short stay on two of the Hawaiian islands), where a rooster watches over his sizeable brood in the parking lot and environs. Chickens are a common site in Maui--we saw them in the Safeway parking lot, strutting at our resort location, just about everywhere we went on the island.
Rodeo General Store, on the main drag in the small town, features POG slushies (passion fruit-orange-guava) alongside Dr. Pepper slushies. In the back, a "no venison today" sticker was displayed on the front of a small refrigerator, where on good days customers can pick up deer meat, according to a male employee I talked to back there.
We had a delicious early lunch at Polli's Mexican Restaurant, on the corner of the road coming into the Makawao from down below and the main drag, which is populated with trendy women's clothing stores, therapy offerings, and skin care vendors. The current edition of the Mexican cafe offers a good chile relleno (which I ordered) and a fish taco with unbreaded fish (my wife had it). Our server said her "previous boss" was Polli, known for her excellent recipes of Mexican favorites.
Unintentionally, we had planned the visit to the town after seeing signs on the way up to Haleakala, a long two-hour drive from Ka'anapali, on the west side of Maui. We thought we'd give it a try, having a last day on the island free with nothing planned. The OB vibes were unmistakable, with the slightly-worn, hippie-ish flavor hard to miss. To get supplies sent to Makawao, you have to travel a long way from Oahu, where most goods are shipped from the mainland to Honolulu, then on to the other islands.
