Maui excursions
 

While I know I want to go to Haleakala, I'm not sure we would do well driving up or down for that matter. I thought my husband, 15 year old son and I might do better with one of the bike tours. How bad is the drive? Has anyone done the bicycle excursion? Do you need to be a super athlete with nerves of steel?

We leave Wed., July 16, so any info will be helpful.

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The drive is really no big deal - loads of people do it each day without problem. The only thing to attend to is to use a low gear to stay slow going down the mountain (rather than using your breaks.)

I havent' done the bike tour. There are loads of past posts on this topic - a seach should turn up information. Since you are coasting downhill for pretty much the entire ride I don't think you need to be athletic at all.

I second scigirl's observations, I could not imagine an easier drive considering how high an ascent you are making (often above the clouds). :S-

Most of the bike tours pick you up at your hotel before dawn. Repeat: before dawn.

You don't need to be a super athlete as you're just coasting downhill. You only need a very early wake-up call.

I really wanted to see Haleakala at sunrise, and we debated between driving up and down ourselves or doing the bike tour. We chose to pass on the bike tour after hearing that people are injured (sometimes badly) quite often. Though, when I was at Haleakala, it didn't seem that bad to me. We also decided against doing the drive ourselves (even though everyone said that the time difference between the east coast and Hawaii would work in our favor, especially since we had just arrived in Maui the day before) since we were worried about being too tired to drive, let alone in unfamiliar roads.

In the end, we chose to take the "Haleakala Sunrise" tour with Polynesian Adventure tours. They picked us up from our hotel at 3:05AM and we got back around 9:30-9:45AM. All I can say is that we're really glad we decided to go this route. The tour was really informative. There was no way we could have even gotten half the things our tour guide said from a guide book (Maui Revealed). Most importantly, we didn't have to fiddle with a map nor worry about being too tired to drive... both of us fell asleep on the drive back. The doughnuts and coffee were also nice things to have, especially the coffee... it's really cold up there.

Do the drive yourself, its no big deal.
I left the Sheraton at 3am, yeh its early to drive but so what. We saved the money on the tour, and we had the flexabilty to come and go when we wanted. We stoped when we wanted to take pics etc.

My Logic was why pay for a tour I can do myself, the money we saved on that we went parasailing with!!

Yes you may be tired but you can be back at your hotel by the pool by 9am.

My husband and I went to Maui 2 years ago and we did the sunrise bike tour. It was probably the most awesome experience both of us have had. We were picked up very early (2:30am-but you're on vacation so who cares and I took an oceanside nap when we got back which was about 2:30pm!) and a van took us and our tour group to the top of Haleakala (at about 8,000 ft above sea level) to watch the sunrise and it was absolutely gorgeous. After the sun rose, the van took us up to about 10,000 feet above sea level where we observed the Big Island from up there and the view was breathtaking. Then you went back down to start your bike tour. You are completely coasting the whole way down and only once towards the end did you have to pedal. This was the most amazing experience. You could hear nothing but the wind and the view was so beautiful that words cannot do it justice. Halfway down we stopped for breakfast and continued down. The ending point was in a small town called Paia where you strolled along the oceanfront before the van took us back to our hotels.

My personal experience is that this is a MUST DO excursion.