Maui Hawaii and Dragon Reef

 Intermediate to Advanced Diver's Site in Maui

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 Maui Hawaii and Dragon Reef

Five Caves/Graves: Beginner to Advanced diver’s site in Maui, Hawaii. Marine life includes Lobster, Octopus, Lava Tubes and White-tip Reef Sharks. There are plenty of caves and arches to swim through, take a flashlight to search the pukas for crabs, lobsters and other invertebrates inside the lava formations. Other marine life in this area includes turtles, frogfish, conger eels and white-tip reef sharks. The depths at this dive site are from 20’ to 50’.

Dragon Reef: Intermediate to Advanced diver's site in Maui, Hawaii, Marine life includes a variety of Reef Fish and Lava Formations. The main aspect of this dive site is the lava arch that looks like a dragon's back. The sides of the arch is covered with white octo coral that resemble dragon scales and at the end of the arch there is a rock formation that forms the shape of a head with the mouth open. The depths at this dive site are from 25’ to 70’.

The St Anthony: This is an advanced diver’s site; the St Anthony was deliberately scuttled in 1997 to become part of the only official artificial reef on Maui, along with hundreds of tyres weighted with concrete.

The site is off Mokapu Beach in Wailea, and the Marine life has made this their home to over fifty different species of fish. Some Green Sea Turtles also consider the St Anthony their home. The wreck has been gutted to let exploratory divers to go in the boat and explore the interior. The depths at this dive site are from 60’ to 70’.

The Lahaina Heritage Museum is located on the second floor of Old Lahaina Courthouse at 648 Wharf Street, which is in the heart of Lahaina Town. One of the main attractions here is the 3D map of the Island which is illuminated by lights from underneath and in an 8’ x 5’ koa wood cabinet.

The museum showcases an exhibition of Whaling days, depicting from past history up to present day, which includes whaling and maritime artefacts. An interactive exhibit of a replicated jail cell from the 19^th Century Hale Paahao (Stuck in Irons House) in Lahaina. Inside, a sailor-prisoner speaks about his escapades in Lahaina that led to his arrest, with sea chantey tunes playing in the background.

The Baldwin House is located at the corner of Front and Dickenson streets. It was constructed in 1834 for Missionary Dr Dwight Baldwin and family; it is the oldest standing structure in Lahaina. It has been sympathetically restored and is open every day.

The oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the Pacific is in Lahania’s harbour, constructed in 1840 under the reign of King Kamehameha to assist the many whaling ships visiting Maui.

The Pioneer Inn is adjacent from the harbor and it dates back to 1901 and was the only hotel in west Maui until the late 1950’s. Near the Inn is an enormous Banyan tree is sited in the heart of the town and is over a hundred years old and over 50’ high, it provides shade to over two-thirds of an acre in the courthouse square.

Wainee Church is located on Shaw Street and was originally constructed (the first stone structure in Hawaii) between 1828 and 1832. It has an inauspicious past behind it, in 1958 the belfry was blown down and miraculously the bell was unharmed (after falling 100’). After fire broke out in 1894, it was rebuilt, happening again in 1947 and rebuilt. In 1951, the Church was demolished by a whirlwind. The present Church was rebuilt yet again in 1953 and renamed Waiola which means ‘The Water of Life’.

At the corner of Front and Shaw streets, a significant archaeological discovery was found. Buried underneath a baseball field were the remnants of an Island in a pond that was formerly the home of Hawaiian Royalty. The artefacts were discovered in 1993 and now, with financial aid from Maui County, an organisation called Friends of Mokuula is working to restore and preserve the site.

The largest statue of Buddha (outside of Japan) is sited in the Jodo Mission, which is located on Puunoa Point near Mala Ramp. The Buddha was erected in 1968 to commemorate the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants a hundred years earlier.

Hale Paahao (Stuck in Irons House) is located at the corner of Wainee and Prison streets in Lahaina. A stone prison built in 1852 to house ‘inebriated and unruly’ Sailors from the Whaling boats that docked at Lahania’s port at that time; it is no longer used as a jail.

TheAhihi Kinau Bay and Nature Preserve is located onMakena Alanui Road, well past Makena, in South Maui. This is a Marine Preserve and includes all of the rocky shoreline from Ahihi Bay to La Perouse Bay. The rocky landscape and undersea formations were created during the last lava flow from Mount Haleakala in 1790. It is a private, secluded, scuba diver’s and snorkeller’s delight when the sea is calm, but there are no land facilities or lifeguards. It is not generally suitable for swimming; also footwear should be worn as there is no sand, only very coarse lava flows.

The Keawalai Congregational Church is located on Makena Road, Makena, in South Maui. This Protestant Church is sited on a gorgeous, sandy cove that overlooks the Ocean. Many of the old headstones in the small cemetery have ceramic photographic portraits of the departed. The walls of the Church are 3’ thick and made of lava using coral as mortar. Ti plants around the church, which, according to tradition, guards against evil.

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