We’ve taken several tours to Hana over the years and especially enjoy the full circle tours. It’s a gorgeous and amazing trip around the island and well worth the long day it takes. We’ve had some terrific tour leaders that made those trips fun, interesting and memorable so this year when our adult children joined us on Maui for a week we booked a circle tour for all five of us. My husband and I were so disappointed in the tour!In retrospect I wish we had called and asked for a refund.
Our driver was a nice young woman, a college student, who has only lived on Maui for two years. Nice though she was, she simply does not have a local depth of knowledge that enabled her to provide the rich context and history of the sights on the circle tour. We passed the closed sugar mill and deserted sugar cane fields, a huge part of Maui’s history, and only received a comment that the mill had closed “two or three years ago, I think.” Pointing out the island of Molokai’i, we were told that a leper colony is there and that a “vaccine” was developed for the disease. It was a cure, not a vaccine and there is so much more to say about the leper colony and Molokai’i. And Charles Lindbergh, who is buried near Hana, became Charles Lindenberger and he “had a really tragic life.” These are just a few examples of a truly lackluster tour.
Lunch was a mediocre huli huli chicken, the air conditioning on the bus did not work well, the driver had difficulty starting the bus at each stop and by the end of the day all we wanted was to get off the bus and have the day over with. We were sad because we felt that our family missed so much. We got a drive but not a tour. We learned from this expensive and abysmal experience to ask whether a tour leader is a longtime local resident.
Do by all means take a circle tour of Maui but with another company.
Réponse de l'hôte
Aug 2019
Sorry to hear our tour didn't meet your expectations. We try to provide as much information as possible but Maui has such rich history it's impossible to fit it all in just one tour. Maybe next time you visit, try to book several different tours and learn more that way. Also you could research the area prior your visit that way you might have richer experience while staying here. Best of luck to you! Aloha