All the guide books to Maui recommend a very un-vacation like rise in the morning to witness the sunrise over the rim of the Haleakala Volcano crater.
Haleakeala means "House Of The Sun" in the Hawaiian language - and so a visit to this place at dawn takes on almost spiritual significance.
Now although Maui is not a large island there are 10,000 feet of incline to deal with and that’s once we arrive at the bottom of the mountain.
So the journey from our hotel will take 2 hours to the top.
Yesterday on our more normal daytime visit to the National Park, one of the Rangers had advised that the colours of the sky start to change a full one hour before dawn and that sunrise would be 5:55 a.m.
Furthermore, far from being a select few "House Of The Sun" worshipers who would get up at this crazy hour - she told us that the park had to close its gates at 5.00 a.m. the previous day because there were too many cars in the car park!
So all things considered - we decide we will get an alarm call at 2.15 a.m. and planned to leave our hotel by 2.45 a.m., which we did and 5 bleary eyed Scots make the pilgrimage off to the top of the volcano.
BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!
The pictures below could hardly do justice to the full panorama that we saw as we sat perched on the wall of the visitors centre at 10,000 feet in the dark thin air of the dawn.
However hopefully you will get the idea.
This is the route we have to drive to get to the top - about 47 miles from beach to mountain top.
When we first arrived at the peak it was 4.30 in the morning and the stars were still out.
The next 2 pictures were taken with a tripod which allowed the stars to be seen. They were so bright because of zero light pollution from human sources - the only light pollution was the full moon!
To see these properly it's best to click on them and open in full size in your browser.
This is the first sign of dawn as the sky turns lighter blue and there is an orange ribbon across the horizon.
The clouds come rolling in over the crater walls and looked like a hollywood special effect - but this just added to the amazing view as the sky got brighter.
This next picture is of Mauna Kea on Big Island (where we had been to watch sunset last week). This is some 89 miles away to the south of Maui.
But from this height we can clearly see the tallest mountain in the world across the clouds.
These pictures show the first signs of the sun peaking over the horizon.
And within minutes of the sun coming over the horizon the warmth of the sun lights up the whole crater.
The girls all had several t-shirt layers on (who brings knitwear to Hawaii??) - and also used the towels from the pool for extra warmth. We reckon when we arrived at the top of the mountain it was only about 3ยบ C so socks were used as gloves and towels as scarves!
These are the observatories at the top which study (aptly enough) the Sun.
It is now 6.30 a.m. and time for the descent back to the sunshine and a huge breakfast after our "House Of The Sun" experience.
Here is a time lapse video of the moment the sun came over the horizon.
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