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I'm a wave windsurfer and skateboarder based in the South West of England. I love to push my level in these sports with my friends, both in England and other countries around the world, while enjoying as many incredible experiences along the way as possible! I started this blog to feature my favorite photos and videos along with written stories, thoughts, rants and bits of knowledge I've gained from my adventures. Click on any photos to enlarge them.

Maui... what it's really like to come here part 2... the landscape (posted 04th April 2013)

I'm back in Maui for 5 weeks and I've decided I want to use this blog to really give a description of what it's like to come here, rather than purely a diary about the waves! This is my forth time here and I'm 2 1/2 weeks into the trip.

So... landscape. There are considered to be around 11 different types of natural environments on Earth, such as jungles, hot deserts, cold deserts etc. (I don't know exactly what they are!) and on Maui you can find most of these environments  The landscape here is so varied, with rain forests, bamboo jungles, rocky mountains, super green mountains  white sand beaches, black sand beaches, rocky beaches, lava fields, life filled reefs and plenty more. The island's shaped kind of like a figure of 8 with a mountain / volcano on each figure (checkout the below image). It takes about 3 hours to drive between the 2 furthest points of the island with a mixture of main roads and super windy roads (which make for some epic downhill skateboarding). If you're windsurfing, you'll want to stay on the north shore roughly around the areas of Spreckelsville, Paia and Haiku. Here you'll mostly find a great mixture of the sandy beaches, rocky beaches, sugarcane fields plus the forests and open fields that start leading up Mount Haleakala which towers above. It's incredibly beautiful. You'll LOVE it. Be sure to do some exploring around the island.

Click on this image and have a look at the yellow labeling I've added to get an idea of where things are

Paia Bay, near Hookipa

Lush valleys among the mountains on the
west of the island 

On top of Mount Haleakala looking over to the mountains on the
west of the island, ready for some epic downhill skating!!

Amazing coastline over on the east of the island