Maui baby

Day 1--Getting there, yey!

Derek and I just returned from the most fabulous trip ever to Hawaii, and we wanted to share our trip with friends and family. We arrived in Maui on Monday night, June 25th, and went straight to Costco for some supplies (food and beer, and beach towels of course). We arrived at our condo in Kahana (about 5 minutes north of Ka'anapali) around 9 pm, and took in the lanai (Hawaiian for deck). It sits right out on the ocean, so it was so amazing to be able to hear and smell the ocean as you get ready to go to bed. One thing we were surprised by on our first night was the weather. It was raining but so hot that first night. The rain lasts about 10 minutes and then its gone. We were told that when its sunny and you are rained on in Hawaii, you are being blessed. These are some pics of the cute little place we stayed

Day 2--Lahaina Town, Ka'anapali beach

We went into Lahaina town, which is the touristy town with all the shops and restaurants, and we also planned our week out by signing up for activities. We ate at Kimo's and had some great lunch and our first Mai Tai's. Then we went to Ka'anapali beach and went swimming for the first time in the ocean. It was sooo warm. Our first night, we went and bought some fresh Ahi from the store and grilled it at the barbecue at our condo, along with asparagus and potatoes. We had so much fun cooking and going out to eat (what we do best!) We also met a local who had fished right outside of our condo and grilled some fresh fish there. It's interesting to hear the stories of the locals, what they do, what their lives are like. Most of them were pretty friendly, but occasionally we would get the "stupid tourists" looks.

Day 3--Napili Bay, Sansei's

We went exploring to a nearby beach/ bay called Napili bay, where we laid on the beach (and got a bit sunburned), snorkeled, and body surfed. This beach is really cool because there's a reef about 100 yards from the beach that you can swim to. Neither of us had ever snorkeled before, but we were able to rent some gear at a nearby shop after we realized that there were turtles out there. It was amazing what we saw... big giant sea turtles and a huge assortment of tropical fish. I never knew how close you could get. It was kind of difficult to get used to the gear, but we figured it out. One of the guys on the beach next to us had recruited a bunch of people to build a ramp to slide a boogie board down and many people were sliding into the shorebreak waves, which looked pretty fun. After a long day at the beach, we headed back to the condo, then went out for dinner at Sansei's, a sushi place in Kapalua highly recommended by friends and locals. It was really good, especially their specialty rolls. We also had our first "lava flow" which is a pina colada with strawberry puree mixed in (yummy).

Day 4--Turtle town, Iao valley, crazy beautiful north coast

As I mentioned, we were a BIT sunburned, and beached out, but we had scheduled a snorkeling trip to Makena on Thursday. We arrived to Makena, which is south Maui, to be greeted by this really cool Hawaiian dude, who would be taking us on our kayaking/ snorkel trip. He was a little intimidating though, but he had his four year old surfer son there with him, which was soo cute. He came out on the Kayaks with us and sat on the front of his dad's kayak (no life jacket by the way). We kayaked out into a bay where we jumped off our kayaks and snorkeled around, with our guide leading the way. That was nice because he was able to show us things we would normally miss, and he educated us about the different types of fish we were seeing. We saw many fish, eel, sea urchins, and we even got to hold a little octopus. The octopus was not too happy about it, and kept spitting out this dye stuff, but it was cool to feel his tentacles stick to our hands. Then we got back into our kayaks and went to another area known as "Turtle Town" because you will find a ton of giant sea turtles there. This where they go to get cleaned by the fish. They need a clean shell so that when they go to the surface of the ocean to get warm, they have a clean surface to soak in all the rays. Pretty cool! I saw at least 6 of them in this one spot. That pretty much concluded the snorkeling. Derek got pretty sea sick from swallowing too much salt water, and I was even starting to get sick by the end of it. The water was pretty choppy. We then headed to Kihei for some lunch, and stumbled on what turned out to be the best restaurant of the trip, "Pita Paradise". I had grilled ono and Derek had a falafel. They were so flavorful and delicious. We decided to avoid the beach for the rest of the day and take a drive to Iao valley, which is a little valley between two mountain peaks in west maui. Here you find the Iao needle, where warriors used to climb and watch for their enemies. We thought we'd find some hiking up there, but no luck, so we just wandered around. I had heard from a friend at work that the drive around the north coast was spectacular, so we decided to try it, although I also heard it was really freaking scary, and it was. Most of it was hairpin turns, blind corners and one way bridges. We stopped at this little fruit stand and got coconuts from this crazy local who opened them up for us and scooped the meat out. We thought we had been totally scammed because we paid ten bucks, but it turned out to be a fair price (same as stores). It took about 2 hours to wind through this treacherous highway, but it was well worth it. Towards the end at mile marker 16, there was this really beautiful spot where there were natural ocean pools, with waves crashing all around. The water is so blue here, but the rocks reminded me of the Oregon coast. Once we finally made it back, we called it a day and made dinner and watched the most beautiful sunset of the trip.

Day 5--Ka'anapali beach, timeshare adventures, haircut

This was a pretty mellow day, we decided to wander around Ka'anapali, so I could look for a place to get my hair cut. I'm so impulsive sometimes, I decided it was finally time to cut this mop off. So we went to the big resort area, because we assumed they would know what they were doing there. We got suckered into a timeshare tour of the Westin villas, which were actually super nice, but it took forever. We earned a free lunch and most of my hair cut was free, but we almost went down 75 k. We made it out of their alive thank goodness. And my haircut turned out super cute.

Day 6--Haleakala volcano, more Ka'anapali

So this was the coolest thing we did on Maui. We woke up at 2 am, to be picked up by crazy Chuck, our driver for Maui downhill. He took us to the headquarters, where by a stroke of pure luck we got to be moved to a different van (Chuck was crazy and scary), and they drove us to the top of the Haleakala volcano (that is pronounced Hall- ee- ah- kah- lah) to watch the sunrise. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. We were at 10,023 feet, above the clouds on the ridge of a 7 mile wide crater of a dormant volcano. It was pretty cold up there. We also saw a very rare plant called the silversword plant, which only grows on this volcano at 7000 feet elevation and above. Pretty cool. We arrived up there around 4:45 am, and watched the sun rise for the next hour or so. It was a full moon as well, so we got to watch the moon set at the same time as the sun rose. AMAZING. Then we prepared for takeoff. The bike tour was different than expected. We all got many tips on safety, were handed these huge helmets and cruiser bikes with nothin' but breaks basically. Then we lined up single file for our descent down the volcano. It drops from 10000 feet to sea level in less than 40 miles. Do the math, that's pretty steep, with over 20 hair pin turns. It was pretty scary at first, but we got pretty confident as we continued to ride. Our guide was really cool, and he is from Arlington, Washington of all places. He used to kick it with the "Love" commune. We stopped in this little community called Kula, which is where many famous people have houses, including Randy Travis, Oprah, Tom Selleck, etc. The weather is really mild right there, and you can see the whole island. When we stopped for lunch, one of the guides found this cute little baby chameleon. It changed colors three times in five minutes. It was pretty mad at us I think. That trip was really really fun and I would recommend it to everyone who ever goes to Maui. You feel like you're gliding over the valley. We got back to the condo around noon and took a nap, then went back out the beach for some boogie boarding, sun bathing, and sand turtle making. We went out to dinner in Ka'anapali also, which is as I mentioned the resort area, there's a beach walk, and lots of cute restaurants. There are tiki torches everywhere, and this is where I got Lei'd. Ha ha. We had a nice dinner at Leilani's, and called it a day. We were sooo tired.

Day 7--Boogie boarding Big Beach, souvenir shopping

This is the day Jessica gets her ass kicked by some killer waves. We went down to "big beach" in Makena, and thought we'd boogie board. The waves were soo strong I got knocked over, flipped and hit my face against the shore pretty hard. Scraped it up and everything. This picture doesn't do it justice, as some of the waves were 8-10 feet. It was kind of cloudy anyway, so we decided to call it a day, and head back to Kihei for more pitas (we had cajun jumbo shrimp ones this time). There is also some good shopping in a little outdoor market here, so we picked up some souvenirs. We then headed back to Lahaina to pick up some more souvenirs that we had seen earlier in the week. Next we headed to Safeway to pick up some fish for our last barbecue. We got two huge swordfish steaks for 14 bucks! Maui's not THAT expensive in a lot of ways. We grilled them up with fresh pineapple and had one more night at the condo, and watched our last sunset in Maui, and packed it up. It was sad to get ready to go!

Day 8--Road to Hell (I mean Hana), and heading home

So we saved this drive for the last day because we didn't want to waste a whole day doing it, and weren't sure if it was worth our while. It wasn't. Even though it was pretty (it follows the windward, tropical side of the coast, where the rain makes everything grow green and lush), it was way too crowded, with tourists stopping at every little bend in the road. It might have been better if we left way earlier in the morning, but we had a bunch of last minute stuff to do. Also, maybe in the spring time when the waterfalls are bigger and more impressive. One thing that was cool to see on the way out was the windsurfers and kite surfers. It's really windy on that side of the island, and they are out there going super fast over all the choppy water. That would be a cool thing to learn how to do. We made it out of there and ended up back in Pa'ia town, at a little dive called Charleys. It is a Willie Nelson themed joint, and supposedly he goes there once a year and hangs out. I'm not sure if he owns it or what. The food was great. And that was it pretty much. We headed back to the crappy airport area of Kahului, and began the epic journey of a red eye home!