No One Wants to Visit Ohe'o Gulch...

...But everyone wants to visit The Seven Sacred Pools. Many years ago, so I'm told, a local hotelier gave the gulch the more romantic moniker, boosting interest in making the drive (there are actually more than seven pools, though). Whatever the name, we can report that it is a beautiful spot. The pools are fed by rainwater shed from the summit of Haleakala. During heavy rainfall, the gulch becomes a torrent. Today, however, it was just beautiful. You can see in the photos that many people choose to swim in the pools--it is even possible to jump from the cliff wall into one of the pools, which is 40 feet deep. We chose to just hike around the pools, since we don't have reef shoes, and the rock is slick and craggy.

The Seven Sacred Pools are found a half hour's drive past Hana. The road is narrow, twisty and fraught with hair-raising one-lane bridges over deep gorges. Along the way, we encountered an amazing waterfall, which we captured in the video below (note the tourists in the foreground to give you a sense of scale).