I choose the guided tour to see the sunrise and bike down the Haleakala with a bike. Overall, I was disappointed with the tour. I felt the trip is overpriced and I list my pros and cons below.
The trip consist of two stages: (1) coming up Haleakala in a car. Our driver was Cory. (2) Coming down Haleakala by bike with two guides (Cory was NOT one of these guides).
PROS:
- I *loved* Cory, who drove us up Haleakala summit for the sunrise. He is extremely knowledgable about Hawaii and during the trip I learned so much with him. Note: this happens between 3-5am, so imagine how engaging he is to keep us awake! Cory is by far the best part of this tour.
- When the sun rises Cory and other guides sing the sunrise song, which is very magic. The experience of watching the sunrise from the summit is magic and totally worth it. Note: this is not an intimate experience as there are many people there too. It is nonetheless amazing. Also, it's super super cold, even during the summer, so the best is to overdress (you will not regret it!)
CONS:
- The biking part of this tour is actually *very small*. You spend most of the time in the car, and not biking. I was expecting more biking.
- There were times where we were in the car between biking. While in the car, the guides asked us to keep our helmets. However, the car was super crowded, each person had their own backpack, and we all were overdressed due to the cold in the summit. On top of this, we were all trying to keep our helmets where there was already no space. This made the trip incredibly uncomfortable without a reason since there was another truck for our bikes where the helmets could be kept too.
- There is absolutely no snacks, drinks, or any free meal from 2am-12pm. While this is an optional aspect of any trip, I was in other organized activities in Maui and all of them offered something. I think this could be the case for the bike tour as well since we all woke up super early and had physical activity.
- When we bike down Haleakala the guides made some stops for pics. However, these stops took too long. Sometimes the guides would engage in a conversation with 2-3 people from the group leaving all others waiting for them. These conversations were super long, and I do not think they were able to engage the whole group in this experience.
- The guides did not tell us any information about the volcano, the island, or Hawaii. They gave us safety instructions for the bike ride multiple times, all the times they were too long, which made it cumbersome. I was expecting instructional stops to lean about the island since this is a guided tour. This did not happen.
If I had to do this again, I would choose a self-guided tour since I am also very comfortable biking. I did feel this was an overpriced activity compared to other activities I did in Maui.