Manana Trail / Waimano Pool

I hated a whole lot of this hike. I hated the down part and I hated the up part. I was OK with the level part though! Actually, this trail starts off nice enough, with a pleasant walk on a long ridge. It goes up and down with a little roller coasting (still a lot more ups than downs though) and the views were pretty enough, but nothing out of the ordinary for Hawaii.

The Manana Trail is about a 12 mile round trip if you go all the way. I didn't. I stopped at the picnic table for a break (about 2 miles up) and then turned around and decided to go back down a little ways and find the trail for Waimano Pool. It took me a little while but I found the right trail and headed down into Waimano Valley. And I mean DOWN, almost straight down. Every step down I thought about the return trip! And it was a long way down, almost 3/4 of a mile to the stream bed at the bottom.

From my guide book: "Waimano Pool is a popular outing because of its short length and its main attraction, two good-sized swimming holes."

My description: Waimano Pool is totally not worth the effort. There are two rather stagnant looking pools, surrounded by trash from lazy partiers.

And then of course you have to go back up the way you came in, almost straight up, and up and up. The guidebook refers to this as "Cardiac Hill", at least it got that right!

I almost forgot, there was one thing I liked on this hike. I finally found some sandalwood trees. I was pretty sure I had found one by the description, so I busted off a little piece of a branch and lit it. It smelled just like the 70's, sandalwood incense!