What’s a Paniolo, you ask? Well, it’s a Hawaiian cowboy. Don’t worry, I didn’t always know there were cowboys in Hawaii either. They ride wild boars, wear grass skirts and make ropes out of palm fiber to lasso ripe pineapples. NOT!

We went to Upcountry a couple of days ago with friends and got a little taste of the other side of the island. Upcountry is a region of central Maui consisting of Makawao, Haiku, Kula, and other small rural towns. There are long winding roads, small general stores, large estates, farms, and horses. It felt like a mix of Ohio’s Metroparks with a smidgen of California forest and a little bit of a small cowboy town out west somewhere. It sure didn’t feel like we were in Maui anymore. Kansas, maybe.

We started the day in Makawao. We dropped off Ashley where she works, a cute boutique clothing store called Jewels of the White Tara in the center of town. The rest of us not-working losers stuffed our faces with a big bag of rare, delicious donuts (the general store/bakery closes whenever the owners feel like it, sometimes for months at a time), some coffee, and took in the almost sickening level of charm Makawao had to offer. We drooled over $1900 hand tooled, hand stitched cowgirl boots at Aloha Cowboy, and Kent bought me some amazing yellow tagua earrings from Goodies. We shopped for a while and realized that Cheya knows just about everyone in Makawao.

We stopped in at Cheya’s high school – and everyone knew him there too. They even asked us to stay for lunch, which by the way, was the most amazing cafeteria lunch I have ever had in my life! We sat at the cool kids table and got all fueled up for our hike.

Hiking to twin falls was awesome. Aside from my traction-free paper thin shoes and a few mosquito bites, I would say that it was a perfect day. We ate wild berries, both Cheya and Kent got weird foot injuries, and we swam in a waterfall. We found some “sensitive ferns” that react instantly when you touch them. At the end, we gazed at beautiful bamboo as the sun set behind us. Can it get any better? Well, yeah! We ended the day with an hour at Mana foods, a great grocery store in Paia full of local veggies and good wholesome food.