I’m not often fond of giving 1-star reviews, but in this case - especially considering the price point of this experience - I feel it is absolutely justified. We booked this tour after reading multiple rave reviews from past customers and word of mouth recommendations which told us that this was the best way to experience Hana and that Hoaloha Jeep Adventures’ tour guides were amazing assets to add to the trip. After taking the tour, I can assure you that this is not always true. I don’t know if the “tour guide” (and I use that term very loosely in this case) we received is indicative of the typical quality provided by Hoaloha Jeep Adventures, but for the sake of anyone else that may gamble on taking this tour, I surely hope not. Most of the fun we had on this glorified Uber ride was in spite of our driver and not because of them.
The tour started out well enough and seemed like it would be an A+ experience. We ended up with a local to Hana driving our jeep which we expected would be a massive plus to the experience. Spoilers: it was definitely not. The first leg of the tour along the southeastern shoreline of Maui was great. The views were beautiful, we stopped at a few gorgeous overlooks and one fantastic black sand beach with some great crashing waves for photo ops. Then we pulled into a steep driveway to what we would find out is the property of our driver. A little weird at first, but we did get the opportunity to use a rather nice outhouse, see a pretty view of the bay below, and try a piece of fresh fruit from one of their trees, so that was pleasant. What was less pleasant was the repeated urging from our driver to take a rest at the benches at their overlook or the all to frequent mentions of the homemade candies her mother and children were selling at the bottom of the driveway. The place was nice enough, but it felt somewhat awkward being on their private property and feeling obligated to buy something from their homemade stash. After a couple urgings that we were ready to move on, our driver finally put her phone down, finished talking with random family members, and we set off again.
This would set the stage for many of the stops along the tour to follow. We would be dropped off at some farm store with a garden path, chocolate stand, or lunch spot and given a couple wave of the hand directions after which our driver would go start chatting with whichever of her local friends happened to be running the place at which we stopped. On more than one occasion we had to stand awkwardly awaiting the driver to finish their conversation because our polite attempts to indicate we were ready to go were either unseen or ignored – and we didn’t want to risk being overtly terse given that we’d be spending the next few hours at the whim of this person. Then, when we would finally get on our way to the next spot we’d inevitably come upon one of the driver’s cousins, aunties, brothers, or other random insert family member here that was either working a stand on the road, doing some sort of maintenance in the area, or just happened to be driving along the road in the same or opposite direction. And on over a dozen occasions (I stopped counting after 14), we would stop so the driver could hand something off or receive something from the person and then chat in Hawaiian with said party for a minute or two while we sat in the back awkwardly, unable to understand a word being said.
On the occasions that we would stop somewhere that didn’t have a fellow local/family member for her to talk to, we’d be given the same wave of the hand, half-coherent directions as we were dropped off at a parking lot and she would pop out her phone to sit in the jeep while we explored alone. Or at least partially alone, as on more than one occasion we just tagged along slightly behind another group with a proper tour guide who would be telling their lucky patrons some interesting facts about the area or engaging with them in some meaningful way. So, a massive thank you to the other tour guides out there that gave us a much more enjoyable experience while we were in the area, proving that it is indeed possible to have a good tour guide along the road to Hana. Just not with Hoaloha.
When we were blessed with some chatter directed at us from our driver that was more than offering us a drink from the cooler or pointing out a piece of bamboo or ginger accompanied by the same 3 facts we heard 60 times throughout the day, it was often not an interesting factoid about the area or history as you would expect from a guide. Rather we were regaled with complaints about how the local government didn’t give the people of Hana any money for anything and how they had to buy this and that out of their own pocket despite all the tourism dollars. Or told repeatedly how she took this job because she was tired of other tour guides giving fake information and telling fake stories about the area (something that at this point we would have welcomed) and how she drove the road all the time anyway so it just made sense. Or how the locals (of which she is one) are sick of the tourists and how so many of them are “bad apples”. Then she would openly laugh about how locals to Hana would break into cars and steal things from tourists even pointing out in one particular instance a car that had had its fuel siphoned off only to chuckle about how “they deserved it because they’re not supposed to park there to go to that waterfall”. I get that there are a LOT of obnoxious tourists that do dumb things and that being a local to a tourist area can be frustrating. But I have honestly never felt more unwelcome in an area than I felt along this trip through Hana. A sentiment that one shouldn’t get from the tour guide they’re paying an exorbitant amount to have guide them through the region. At the end of the day, it honestly felt less like we were paying for a tour and more like we were paying for protection and right of passage through her land with a little side dish of local politics.
The straw that really broke the camel’s back for us, however, had to be our time at the black sand beach at Wai‘ānapanapa State Park. We pulled into the lot and were again given almost meaningless directions to where anything of note was at in the park, then were told we had about 45 minutes to enjoy the area. Great. So we wasted how much time shuttling around talking to her local buddies only to have 45 minutes of time out of what should have been a 2.5 to 3 hour window at Wai‘ānapanapa. Miraculously we managed to rush through the park and see a large number of great sites (and listen to a couple other tour guides who were giving actual proper tours) and return within the 45-minute window. Then, as we were getting in and ready to leave, upon mentioning how disheartened we were to have only had 45 minutes, our driver informed us that “well, technically we have another 30 minutes or so on our reservation if you wanted to go back out”. Information that would have been great to have at the BEGINNING of our stint in the park so that we might have actually had proper time enjoy getting into the water at the beach rather than simply speed hiking to some various sites of interest. But, by the time we would have grabbed our gear and gone back down to the beach again, the extra time would have been essentially worthless.
I could go on with more examples of disappointments from the day - like how we didn’t get to stop at the Garden of Eden, or Keanae Peninsula, or Kahanu Gardens, or how for the areas we weren’t allowed to stop at but could only have drive by viewings of we would get whipped by them in a couple seconds, clearly going more than the 15mph limit along the stretch, or how we were denied a couple requested pull offs on areas that were clearly for pulling off because “there’s a better view up ahead” (spoilers: it wasn’t better), but honestly, it feels like beating a dead horse at this point. I have to believe this company must have at one point had great guides, and maybe they still do. But we did not receive anything resembling the rave reviews we read online. I cannot tell you what on this trip was worth anywhere near the over $1300 we paid for it. And given the plethora of other amazing tours we took in Hawaii for much, much cheaper I can’t in good conscience encourage anyone to gamble their hard-earned money with this company and this tour because you might end up with the experience we had.