Mauka Maui Tour Day 8 and 9
Mauka is a Hawaiian word, which means toward the mountains : inland, upland "What is the Mauka Maui tour?" Jack Meyn, Miles Jones and Ian Coggan are traveling to Maui, skating and experiencing the Hawaiian island Maui. Not as a pro tour, it is not to race or to promote anything. It is to have fun and create an epic adventure. We hope it inspires you to go traveling and skating new terrain. Maui skaters are: Dakota Camp (illife trucks, Aloha Boardshop) Johnathan Valenzuela (Riptide Bushings, Aloha Boardshop) Zach Newman (Aloha Boardshop) Malachi Oertel. End of day 7 With our hire car patiently waiting to be used we decided to head up to the summit of Haleakala Crater, as it was something I never got to do on my first trip to Maui and both Miles and Ian where keen on as well. 
We packed the car up with our warm clothes and our boards in case we were to hit any hills on the way there or on the way back. Until this night, the boys had not traveled up the crater so it was a slow drive up through each of the sweeping turns, all windows down, taking in the views on the dark night. The moon was almost full and as we got higher on the mountain we were getting above the different levels of cloud’s, we even saw a ‘moonbow’ (rainbow at night) which was pretty cool to us. Miles threw himself down the crater, super dark under the clouds but nothing has ever stopped Miles from doing a run. We got to the bottom and decided to film a raw run. Which was obviously sick. Over an hour’s drive we finally got to the summit at about 1am. We couldn’t see anything further than bout 20 ft but once we found a parking spot for the night we hopped out and ran up the stairs to the observatory and quickly found out it CAN be cold in Hawaii!
We jumped back in the rental car and carefully drove down the crater from the summit and into town to get breakfast. We all had a craving for pancakes so we stopped by the well-known Ihop (international house of pancakes) to get sorted. Miles and I got the pancake-bacon-egg-hash brown special and Ian got the banana strawberry goodness. We were almost falling asleep at the table so we paid, tipped and got out of there on the last stretch home to hit the pillow. 
We slept from 9am-4pm and woke up not really knowing what day it was. Until it hit us that we hadn’t skated yet so we moved quicker than we ever have and packed the car up to chase the sun and get some raw runs on an upcountry classic. 
We had enough sun for 2 and a half runs but kept going until the fourth in the dark. We loaded our boards into the car and headed back down to our homie Dakotas in Kihei where we stopped at the fish taco van to get our cheap dinner fix.
Our rental cars brakes could be smelt from a mile away and we were happy with the footage so we decided to bail on down to one of the local surf shops on Maui called ‘Hi-Tech’ for their yearly one day sale. Ian, Miles and Dakota all hooked themselves up with wheels and gloves for 30%- a struggling skaters dream. We left the chaos of strong accented American’s and met up with our homie Zach Newman at Café La Plage one of our favorite breakfast spots. 
We played backgammon and had some Bagels and fruit smoothies then piled into the car to skate the crater. We spent a bit of time at the crater and the boys got 3 runs in before the rain hit. All in all it was a pretty chilled out day that ended at Ian’s favorite spot- Maui Brewing Co. I don’t drink and Miles had very briefly gotten creatively medicated at Dakotas so we went straight to the food truck for Nachos. They had guava chili aioli. It was wild.
We packed the car up with our warm clothes and our boards in case we were to hit any hills on the way there or on the way back. Until this night, the boys had not traveled up the crater so it was a slow drive up through each of the sweeping turns, all windows down, taking in the views on the dark night. The moon was almost full and as we got higher on the mountain we were getting above the different levels of cloud’s, we even saw a ‘moonbow’ (rainbow at night) which was pretty cool to us. Miles threw himself down the crater, super dark under the clouds but nothing has ever stopped Miles from doing a run. We got to the bottom and decided to film a raw run. Which was obviously sick. Over an hour’s drive we finally got to the summit at about 1am. We couldn’t see anything further than bout 20 ft but once we found a parking spot for the night we hopped out and ran up the stairs to the observatory and quickly found out it CAN be cold in Hawaii!
Day 8
Our rental car was good for about anything apart from sleeping in, but somehow we managed to get it done and woke up a few hours later to catch the sunrise. We got up and out in the freezing cold along with hundreds of other onlookers. There were cloud’s surrounding us and after about 30-45 minutes later we finally saw the sun. It was definitely a sight to see and the views at 10,023ft where gnarly. We spent a bit of time up there taking it in and getting some good photos. We got to have a look at the Haleakala Silversword (Argyroxiphium sandwicense subsp. Macrocephalum) which is a flower that can only be found above 6900 feet on the Hawaiian island Maui. A local ranger told us a little about the flower. How important it is to Maui, that it can grow up to 2 metres, and that they can live for over 50 years. We jumped back in the rental car and carefully drove down the crater from the summit and into town to get breakfast. We all had a craving for pancakes so we stopped by the well-known Ihop (international house of pancakes) to get sorted. Miles and I got the pancake-bacon-egg-hash brown special and Ian got the banana strawberry goodness. We were almost falling asleep at the table so we paid, tipped and got out of there on the last stretch home to hit the pillow. We slept from 9am-4pm and woke up not really knowing what day it was. Until it hit us that we hadn’t skated yet so we moved quicker than we ever have and packed the car up to chase the sun and get some raw runs on an upcountry classic. We had enough sun for 2 and a half runs but kept going until the fourth in the dark. We loaded our boards into the car and headed back down to our homie Dakotas in Kihei where we stopped at the fish taco van to get our cheap dinner fix.
Day 9
We woke up at 6am to get in the car and head up to Polis, an upcountry super run, to film a raw run of our Maui family Dakota. Poli Polis is known as a sort of action sports hub on the mountain. 4WD, motorbikes, hunting, skateboarding, drone flying, paragliding-it all goes down up at Polis. Luckily it was a weekday and we were there early so we headed to the very top and set the camera up. 12 minutes later, through the 20+ hairpins and dropping thousands of feet we ended the run before a cattle guard and where psyched on how sick it was and how lucky we were to get a clean run with no cars (we passed 3 dogs which we slowed down for of course). Our rental cars brakes could be smelt from a mile away and we were happy with the footage so we decided to bail on down to one of the local surf shops on Maui called ‘Hi-Tech’ for their yearly one day sale. Ian, Miles and Dakota all hooked themselves up with wheels and gloves for 30%- a struggling skaters dream. We left the chaos of strong accented American’s and met up with our homie Zach Newman at Café La Plage one of our favorite breakfast spots. We played backgammon and had some Bagels and fruit smoothies then piled into the car to skate the crater. We spent a bit of time at the crater and the boys got 3 runs in before the rain hit. All in all it was a pretty chilled out day that ended at Ian’s favorite spot- Maui Brewing Co. I don’t drink and Miles had very briefly gotten creatively medicated at Dakotas so we went straight to the food truck for Nachos. They had guava chili aioli. It was wild.
#maukamauitour