Mauka is a Hawaiian word, which means  toward the mountains : inland, upland Hop's note: The Mauka Maui tour is three Central Coast homies: Jack Meyn, Miles Jones and Ian Coggan traveling, skating and experiencing the Hawaiian island Maui. They are mainly staying in the small county of Kihei. There is a long tradition of going on a "trip" in the surf and skate communities. A trip was not only to explore but to find others who shared your passion. Just because no one is skating in your local neighbourhood does not give you permission to give up and stop skating. It's time to get moving and find other rad places and skaters. Longboarding is a global community, just waiting for you to drop by and say hello. While you are planning your next trip, you can follow these guys on Facebook and Instagram with #maukamauitour or the next post here on the blog. Maui skaters Dakota Camp (illife trucks, Aloha Boardshop) Johnathan Valenzuela (Riptide Bushings, Aloha Boardshop) Zach Newman (Aloha Boardshop) Malachi Oertel.

DAY 1

Arrived in Maui at 8:30am, after a solid as hell 14 hour transit from home, and we were greeted by one of Jack's mates: Mikey. Mikey and Jack hung out together last time Jack was here, so I'm stoked to know we have a homie here who was down for almost anything.  He took us from Kahului Airport to Kihei, where Dakota lives, who is putting us up for our time here. We are mainly staying in the small county of Kihei which only has a population of about 20,000, and is classed as a desert due to climate and lack of vegetation and rain.

Mikey took us to Foodland, where we all got Poke Bowls, which is raw fish like Mahi and Ono with white or brown rice mixed with Shoyu, which we ate by the beach. Then it was time for our first trip to Walmart, where everyone was so amused by our accents and you could here a small fuss being made about us reacting to prices and other items around the store, after picking up a few essentials like blow up mattress and pillows, we went to a local Surf, Skate shop called Hi-tech, just quickly sussed out some price differences and met Dave the local Skate Guru and handed him some ASRA and Hopkin for some Aussie Stoke.

After coming back to the house, we were just hanging out and Miles pulled out the Milo Snack Bars and Jack revealed a Vegemite Tube, we got Mikey to try both and he was so stoked on the Milo Bar but in classic American style he squirted almost a teaspoon amount on to his finger and tried it, he was less than stoked about the taste referring it to Fish and Salt. Then we took off down to the homies local skate shop, Aloha Skate, there we met Zach, a local shredder who is always down for a skate. Miles had an overload of stoke and bought some fresh Black Arbor Sucrose wheels, Paris skate tool, Aloha Stickers and Aloha Shirt. Later that night, around 7:30pm, we went to a local night skatespot known as Maui Meadows, for my first time skating the run, we wore headlamps which was pretty gnarly only using those for light while all 5 of us skated down the run, Dakota, Zach, Miles, Jack and I. It was pretty gnar getting up to about 75km/h with only headlamps on, after a drifty run. After 5 full runs we took off to Monkey Pod for dinner and beers, we all got pretty rad Hawaiian themed Pizza.

 

DAY 2

After a huge sleep in, we woke up at about midday, Dakota took us to Breakfast at Cafe @ La Plage, I opted to go with the Maui Melt, which was crazy good, it had Avo, Turkey, and BLT. Jack messed up and got “chips” instead of the salad, he was so surprised when the cashier offered a packet of Doritos instead of fries. Dakota then took us to on our first trip to Polis Polis, which is where most skaters from Maui learn to slide and perfect their skillset. First we grabbed John, who recently skated a surfboard down The Crater, we sessioned a left pin for about an hour and learnt how the pavement handled and how our wheels felt on it.

The hill itself is so gnarly, like next level, its about 20 switchback hairpins, without including all the kinks and drops all while being only just over a lane wide and having traffic rarely but still traveling both directions. Surprisingly most people are stoked or chilled about us skating down in and even offer us lifts back up in their utes or cars.

We caught a lift all the way to the top, where it was crazy, clouds swamped the corners and even felt a light dusting of rain settling in for the first 4 pins. If you can imagine looking through a corner and being able to see another pin and 3 bends right before it, that’s what it was like. Once out of the clouds, I drove while Miles, Dakota and John smashed out the rest of the run, watching Dakota and John on their local run was so impressive, I almost couldn’t believe how fluent their riding was. Later in the day we skated a few spots, including the bottom section of The Crater, which was pretty cool got our first taste of skating switchbacks in the right-hand lane on a two way road, it was pretty chilled having 6 of us do the run, then we moved onto our final hill for the day called Ulus, which is a quiet main road which cuts through a small town, it goes for about 7km and has some pretty cool left-rights and straights which a surrounded by shrubs and grass. We skated that road twice until sunset which you could see in the background of the footage which made it that much better.

For dinner, we had a pretty chilled out meal from a food truck, which hooked us up with fish, chicken, and beef tacos. Was simple and but still very tasty. Tomorrow more poke bowls, mangoes, the other side of the mountain and we hear they have some nice beaches... #maukamauitour