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Dragon's TeethWhat do you get when you mix salty ocean spray and cooled lava rock over a long period of time? You end up with a beautiful rock formation known as Dragon's Teeth, located on Makalua-puna Point in Kapalua, Maui.
If your coming from Kaanapali, take Highway 30 (Honoapiilani Highway) north to Kapalua, and make a left turn onto Office Road. (If you're driving down from the Nakalele Blowhole, you'll be making a right turn onto Office Road.) Follow Office Road just short of 1/2 mile, at which point you will come to a T in the road. Turn right at the T, and drive a very short distance until you reach a small parking lot (above photo).
The plaque reads in part: "Here Hawaiian remains dating between A.D. 850 and the early 1800s are interred and segments of Alaloa, an ancient stone-paved trail, are preserved." It is a registered State Historical Place reserved exclusively for native Hawaiian ceremonial and religious practices. Note that public entry is prohibited.
This photo (above) is another view of the Honokahua Burial Site looking southeast towards the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua Resort. 
Past the plaque, walk north along the grass ridge (photo right) towards the ocean with the Bay Golf Course fairway on your left, and the Honokahua Burial Site on your right. When you come to the trees and bushes that line the ocean, go left.
Continue to walk along the edge of the fairway. Just before you get to the green, veer right and continue walking.
Along the way, we walked among several of these bright gold-colored butterflies.
These rock formations are some of the Dragon's Teeth. My son is 4 feet, 5 inches tall, which gives you some idea of their height. In the distance you can see D.T. Fleming Beach Park.
This is a closer view of D.T. Fleming Beach, looking southeast.
A happy moment with mother and son "inside" the Dragon's Teeth.
After researching online for over an hour and having no success in figuring out how these interesting 1 1/2 inch "lava lines" were formed (above) at Dragon's Teeth, my lucky break finally came. I found out that Dr. Jeffrey D. Keith, a Brigham Young University geology professor, had previously done volcanic research in the Hawaiian Islands. So I decided to send him an email, and asked him what he thought this lava formation was called and how it was formed. This was his very informative response: "My best guess from the photo is that this is small chilled dike. It may have been sourced from a lower portion of the flow and then just squeezed up during flow inflation or some other event. Another guess would be that it is a clastic dike formed as water trapped in rocks or sediments beneath the hot flow boiled and flashed to steam and carried bits of broken rock up along a fracture" (emphasis added). Thank you, Dr. Keith!
This is a wide view of the Dragon's Teeth. We hope you enjoyed the photos! It was now time to go back to the condo and take a Sunday afternoon nap. Click here to go back to Inexpensive Maui Activities Click here to go back to Barefoot In Maui Home.
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