Day 9 and 10;
see all the pictures here. Our last day and finally, a blue sky with no clouds in sight. I woke up not knowing whether to laugh or cry...? I kept telling myself, "at least we have this one day" and we made the most of it! We took an early morning walk and had a very nice breakfast, and were on the beach by about 9:00. That would be the theme of the day - BEACH! In fact, we spent so much time on the beach that my first photo from this day isn't taken until after dinner.
As you might guess, our activities were as follows;
- put on sunscreen
- spread out towels
- lay down
- read a book (yes, even me, Mike spent a lot of the day reading)
- snorkel (see below for our secret)
- more sunscreen
- lay down
- snorkel
- more sunscreen
- eat lunch
- snorkel
- lay down
It was that kind of day and we did NOT want to leave the sun. Our little snorkel secret? Well everyone's heard of Black Rock; the famed snorkeling spot a few minutes walk from our hotel. What we didn't know is that the entire area to the south of black rock also is good snorkeling - you just go out about 100' and swim parallel to the shore, letting the wind carry you. The bonus? Nobody was doing it but us so we had that stretch all to ourselves.
We blitzed into Lahaina to grab some Maui Fish Tacos "to-go" and made it back for sunset on the beach. After dinner, I was concentrating taking some sunset pictures of Black Rock when we heard some people shouting behind us; we both turned and saw a huge whale in full breech, just off the shore. It turned out that there were a few whales swimming right in front of our beaching putting on a huge show for about 45 minutes, right as the sun was going down...it was magical, and a perfect cap to the day.
Following sunset we walked down to Whalers Village where I enjoyed a scrumptous pineapple dessert of some kind (can't even remember what it was called, but it was good...and rich...like a "sugar bomb").
Our last day, day 10, travel day, we woke up super early to catch the moon-setting - it was a full moon and we were fortunate to see it setting over the water just as the sun was coming up behind us. Then, on our way to breakfast, I had a blast shooting (with my camera) the beautiful red cardinal that you see here. Another nice breakfast, a memorable stop for a "sugar cane juice smoothie," and reluctantly, we boarded our plane to head home...to the snow.
One last note: on the flight home, there was this contest. At first I thought the pilot was kind of acting like a geek, but what the heck, it's a long flight. The rules were simple - at about the halfway point he (the pilot) would come on the radio and tell us some details of the flight;
- total miles
- current miles travelled (so far)
- current air speed, and current ground speed
- number of miles left in our trip
- travel time so far
The winner of the contest would be the one who most closely guessed the hours and minutes remaining in the flight, and would recieve a complimentary bottle of wine. I decided to do some simple math; instead of all the dumb equations, I simply GUESSED - I guessed based on the total estimated flight time. I handed Julie a piece of paper and she decided to give it a try to - she thought for a moment, and then wrote down her answer too. A guy behind us walked up to our seat-partner and asked him to do some calculations for him (our seat-mate had a computer). He even asked the pilot if it was "nautical miles" or "regular miles." Well wouldn't you know it - Julie and this guy TIED. They both guessed 2 hours, 46 minutes and the correct answer was 2:47. I was very proud of my brilliant wife at that moment! The tie-breaker question was "what is the combined number of years of service of the 7 member flight crew?" (both pilots and stewards/stewardesses)...the guy guessed 40-something, Julie guessed about 115, and the answer was 165+ - JULIE WON!
We're saving that bottle for something special...
See all the pictures here
MAHALO - thanks for reading.
Day 8 was a glorious day! Why? Because finally, the sun kind of came out, as witnessed by my first sunset picture of the entire trip. Granted; it wasn't a full day of sunshine by any stretch (which we didn't get until Day 9); but it was better than what we'd been getting. This is a shorter post because basically, we woke up, hit the beach, boogie-boarded, had lunch, and went on our Whale Trip.
The Whale Trip: for those who have done the Pacific Whale Foundation Trip, here's what we did...
We followed up the trip with a nice dinner at Kimo's - a great value for what you get. We had a very nice waiter who accomodated all of our needs; even splitting our plate at no extra charge. Our entree? Opakapaka - our favorite type of fish in Maui.
Day 7: The Road to Hana. We agreed that if the weather looked bad, we’d hit the road again and do part of the road to Hana. Our plan was to till about mile marker 14-15 on the Hana Hwy, then turn around (once you hit the highway, it’s about 33-34 miles to Hana). What I wasn’t planning on was going all the way to Hana. For the last 15-20 miles, we were watching the gas gauge closely, relying on what we’d been told which was “gas can be found in Hana” (lucky for me, the gas station was open). I’m getting ahead of myself though…
The road: The Hana Highway would be better named “The Hana crawl-way” as many people literally “creep” along the road. And if you know me well, you know that I hate slow or bad drivers…and there were plenty of them on this road; you know, slowing down to 5-10 mph around every corner. Further, there’s really no places to pass; you have to hope that 1) the drivers know they’re slow, 2) the drivers see you behind them, and 3) they are polite enough to pull over and let you pass. Needless to say, on the drive in, the last 45 minutes or so (about 12-15 miles), a lady driving a car didn’t seem to appreciate items 1, 2 or 3, and she ended up with about 8-10 of us following her quite slowly.
Day 6 Dawned, well, it dawned cloudy. That didn’t stop us, however, from a lot of fun. We started out heading back to Honolua Bay; not to snorkel this time, but simply to enjoy the lush forest area, take some pictures and climb some vines. Aside from the climbing, Julie also grabbed a couple of passion-fruits and popped them open to expose their lovely innards…no, we didn’t partake of the goodness.
Ok, back to our day – we headed north and next stopped at the olivine pools. The pools were cool, but would have been a whole lot neater if the sun had been out. Still, worth the stop and we also managed to find another small blow-hole. We kept going into the small village of Kahakuloa, where we stopped for some of the “world’s best banana bread.” To be sure, it was good, but there were about 4-5 places on the island that bragged about their bread…hard to say who’s was best.
Eventually we made to the city of Wailuku; not much to write home about (for all of you who want to move to Maui, Wailuku is probably a place you could find affordable housing). Wailuku didn’t have much going for it, but we did manage to find a place to stop for lunch before heading to the “Io Needle.” The pictures in the guide-book were amazing; the needle itself left something to be desired. It was extremely crowded with a couple of tourist buses and signs everywhere telling you to stay on the path. The aggravating part was that there were numerous foot-paths heading off in other directions that were SO tempting to take…another time, maybe.
Our first stop was to Honolua Bay. This bay is arguably the best snorkel spot on the island; namely, because it's part of the Mokuleia Marine Life Conservation District. In other words, it's protected from man (no spear fishing, or fishing of any kind). The only problem with the Bay is depending on the weather, the surf, and a fresh-water river that feeds into the Bay, it can either be the best snorkeling on the island or a murky mess that you don't even want to enter. We had experienced both and were hopeful of the best...and we were not disappointed. Even though it was mostly cloudy, the water was fairly clear and we enjoyed some great snorkeling, including a huge school of fish that we swam with for a bit. In addition, we saw a couple of sea turtles from the shore who were apparently in some kind of mating ritual we believe. They were at the surface but we were told to "stay away from them" (and we complied). The snorkeling was great - you'll have to wait until the Day 6 post to see a few pictures though.
Following the snorkel and "warming up," (yes, we got in the car and cranked the heat), we decided to check out a couple of new things - namely, the Nakalele blowhole. Amazingly, we hadn't really ventured to this part of the island before (we will, at this point, credit the big blue "Maui revealed" book - an excellent book for some tips on the island). It described an "alien landscape" along with a powerful blowhole. I did my homework to make sure we saw it at high-tide on a day when the surf was up a little and we were not disappointed. The only thing that would have made it better would have been some sun and blue sky. You can hike all the way down to the blowhole (as some others we saw did) but you'd risk getting very wet. The landscape around the area was "alien," just as described. The holes in the rock are caused by the spray of the salt water eating things away.
