Cliff Jumping in Maui

      There were breathtaking views everywhere you turned, and the clear blue ocean surrounded us on all sides. My dad and I were pretty jetlagged and woke up really early. We decided to go for a morning hike along Waihee Ridge. We drove to the trailhead a few miles from our hotel and began our trek. Waihee Ridge wasn’t supposed to be a very intense hike, only 2 miles with a bit of uphill. What my dad and I didn’t know is that Waihee Ridge and Wail’eia Ridge each start at the same point. To the right is a nice brief loop with a view of the Kapalua village recommended for beginner hikers. To the left is a steep 5 mile climb up Wail’eia Ridge and back down recommended for expert hikers only. They weren’t marked, and my dad and I, being the naive tourists we were, decided randomly to take the trail on the left. After walking uphill through lush jungle for about 45 minutes, my dad and I realized something weird was going on. We decided to turn around and head back. The trail wasn’t very obvious and in our jetlagged state, we mistook a path leading off diagonally down the hill for the correct trail. We marched down the hill until we noticed it turning sandy and realized we were definitely not going the right way. By now this 20 minute hike had turned into a 2 hour expedition. We decided to just stick it out and see where it led.

      We popped out in a cove surrounded by native Hawaiians that were very surprised to see two bedraggled tourists at 11 in the morning. We nodded politely and began to turn back around when, to our horror, we noticed a teenager backflipping off the cliff on the side of the cove. No one else seemed particularly phased by this. Soon, more and more people began jumping. A boy a few years older than me came over to us.

     “It’s pali. You jump. Perfectly safe.” he told us in a lyrical mix of English and Hawaiian. He walked us over to the edge and urged us to jump. The rest of the group had gathered to see the tourists, or malahini as they called us, jump. There was a surprising amount of pressure to take the plunge, so we took off our shoes and walked hesitantly to the edge of the cliff. It was a lot higher than it looked. After some serious reassuring from the boy that it was perfectly safe, I jumped.

     The moment that I jumped was the slow motion falling that you see in the movies. Then I hit the water and was pulled back into reality. The cool blue ocean wrapped around me, and I can very clearly remember a konu or sea turtle swimming on the bottom of the cove below me. I stayed underwater for a moment, watching the light filter in and the brightly colored fish dart around. I surfaced and then swam back to the edge of the cliff. This presented the new challenge of how to get back up. I watched a little girl deftly scamper up the side of the rock, so I followed suit and managed to haul myself up again. I was met with pats on the back from the Hawaiians. They were kind enough to show us a shortcut back to the start of the trailhead, and we hiked back to our car. Finally, we made it to the hotel where my mom and brother laughed about us getting lost, but did not properly appreciate my daring leap from the cliff with locals.

     While we were in Maui, we went snorkeling with tropical fish, hiked 1600 feet to the top of a mountain, swam underneath a waterfall and lounged on the beach, but my favorite and most unforgettable experience was cliff jumping.