Trip To Maui

Getting There

Jenny and I flew to the Hawaiian island of Maui on Friday, Oct 20th. Delta Airlines delayed every flight all the way there, even causing us to miss our connection in Los Angeles by an hour. This made us shuffle to another flight that had a stopover in Honolulu and added a leg to our trip. Overall, it was 4 hours more than we'd expected. We should have made it to Maui before our friends by several hours, but they beat us there. This messed things up for us, since we didn't have a ride to the hotel, so we rented a car (thanks Kameron!) and had it for the week. Turned out to be a good thing, since we put several hundred miles on it. I didn't blame Delta too much for the delays, since LAX's air traffic control software crashed the day before, throwing off several schedules, but I don't see why the only flight to leave on time from LA had to strand 30 passengers and delay them 2 hours, whereas the plane could have waited 15 minutes. More on this later.

21 hours [3 hours driving, 9 1/2 flying, 8 1/2 waiting], 4 planes, 1 rental car

Honolulu Airport Gardens

Day 1: Saturday

Being 5 hours earlier in Maui than Texas, we woke up at the crack of dawn (noon to our senses). After driving a bit to check out the various scuba diving shops, a little Micky D's breakfast, some grocery shopping for saving money in the later part of the week, we went back to the hotel and snorkeled right off the beach for a couple of hours. I was amazed that so many fish are just right there and you never see them without a mask on! There's a small coral reef build on lava rock just off the shore with plenty to look at. I brought back a small scar on my knee from swimming a little too close above the highest part when the wave dipped down. Lesson learned.

Lunch and snorkeling. Dinner was at the Sea Watch Restaurant. It was the most incredible meal experience I have ever had, of all the places I've ever been. The service was impeccable, the ambiance classy but not pretentious, and the food wonderfully delectable. Jenny had amazing crab cakes, beef tenderloin and potatoes and veggies. Best crab cakes in the world. I had macadamia nut crusted brie, marlin steak holo holo and yams in coconut milk. Spectacular.

Of the Kea Lani

Even the elevator landing is beautiful

Parts are desert

Parts are golf courses

Day 2: Sunday

Blue Water Rafting tour. We saw lots of cool lava flow formations on the hard-to-reach south east Maui coast, including blow holes and compression caves. One was so large and the captain so crazy that he backed the whole boat up into a compression cave and waited for a big wave to explode into a salt mist behind us. Quite a rush so early in the morning. We saw a fair sized pack of spinner dolphins sleeping, as they do during the day, at the surface. About 30 or so dolphins from what I counted, but perhaps more. Later we came back and snorkeled with them briefly, but all the commotion sent them to the bottom autonomically, still completely asleep. We only saw one at a distance of about 20' below us, but it was worth it to say we swam with dolphins. They came right back up once people left the water. These kind, spinner dolphins, are only about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long fully grown.

We also snorkeled with a bunch of sea turtles. They have been on the Endangered Species list since 1978 and it is a $25,000 fine to even touch or chase one, so we were careful not to bother them. However, they've become quite friendly with humans recently and one or two surfaced within a few feet of me. They breathe air, so sea turtles surface regularly, but can hold their breath for very long periods. These were about 3 feet across and roughly rounded, plus their feet/hands/fins/flappers/whatever are another foot long. The one I was watching dove to the bottom and snapped at another turtle, then they both swam off. Definitely worth the price of the tour. Breakfast and lunch were provided.

We didn't take pictures on this trip because our old camera's batteries were dead. Missed out on the turtles and dolphins here... By noon, we were in the car and driving around Kihei (pronouced Key-hay) looking for touristy shops to buy trinkets. Found a few, but not anything like I'd expected. Apparently Maui isn't all that commercialized, except for the hotels.

Dinner was at Big Mama's Fish Parlor on North Maui in Paia. I had Onaga (a snapper fish), potatoes and asparagus. Jenny had some spicy fish (that was very tasty) under an onion glaze. Overall, it was overpriced and the atmosphere was lackluster, but pretty good food. This made us decide to start eating cheaper meals on the island.

Me relaxin'

Jenny relaxin'

Post card sunsets (I took these)

Jeff, Leesa, Jenny and me at Big Mama's

Day 3: Monday

We decided to try the breakfast at our hotel, Kea Lani. Oh, I forgot to mention how nice the hotel was. Very. Great views, excellent service, etc. Pretty rich for my blood, but such thorough pampering doesn't come along often in life. The breakfast was decent and plenty varied, but nothing to get excited about. Very pricy for breakfast, though.

We wanted to not get too sun burned early in the trip, and one of the bellhops mentioned Honolua Bay had excellent surfing (for experienced surfers only) and were expecting big waves due to a tropical storm at sea. So we hopped in the car and drove off to West Maui. It's basically a flat drive in the shadow of a monstrous volcano. I think it has rainbows constantly surrounding it, since clouds never really left the peak. We took some good pictures of the drive there on my digital camera, and some more once we got there. Honolua Bay isn't a town, it's just a cape that people drive to and walk down with surfboards to catch waves. There's nothing out there but sugar cane, 300 foot cliffs, and plenty of lava rock and coral reefs to watch the waves crash on, hopefully without any surfers on them. There were about 30 surfers in the water that I photographed, some of which really could surf. From our perspective, it was hard to say how big the waves were, but I'd guess between 6 and 10 feet peak to trough. I dunno if this is unusually large, but a local said they were disappointing. Heck, they rarely get that big in Texas except during a hurricane.

On the drive back, we stopped in Lahaina. Lahaina is the center of local government on Maui and appears to be the most commercialized with shops and fun things to do for cash and camera toting tourists. We didn't hit Front Street, but looked at all the places on the highway instead. For some reason, there's more art galleries in Lahaina than in any other place I've ever seen. There's even two Thomas Kinkaid galleries within a block of each other. Ridiculous. Anyway, I saw one artist's work that I really liked. It's very futuristic work, all on aluminum sheet metal, and it looks something like 3-d electricity and colors swirling off the plate into the room around it. Too expensive for me right now, at about $25,000 for a single work, but excellent to admire in galleries.

During the remainder of the day, we enjoyed the beach and body surfed a few waves, and took some more pictures. We did some laundry in Kihei and ate pizza for dinner. Felt like a college student again, doing clothes in a laundromat.

West side and Honolua Bay

FIND THE DRAGON in this picture

Tons of surfers!

Day 4: Tuesday

We got up early and went with a Scuba Shack tour, snorkeling at the Molokini Crater. The crater was formed by a side vent blowout from the underwater volcano off South Maui, not far from the hotel. The crater is circular with a pit in the middle 150 feet deep, with clear visibility straight to the bottom on a good day. Only half of the rim of the crater is above water, as it's a little lopsided. The current is strong on the far side and pulls out to sea, so snorkeling near the rim is dangerous. Didn't stop me from inspecting the rim where it goes under water, but when I found it difficult to swim back, I had an all new respect for the ocean's currents and did not doubt again. I was intent on snorkeling at Molokini since it was supposed to be one of the best places on the island. I wasn't really impressed. It was a nice trip out, but there weren't all that many different kinds of fish. We swam through a few schools that were thick enough to disorient you, but snorkeling is hard to get really lost in the scenery. I started to free dive a little just to enjoy it a bit more.

Then we went to Turtle Town. There's no place called Turtle Town, really, but this one place has so many sea turtles it has become an attraction of its own and known by this name recently. We saw about 7 or 8 turtles this time, mostly sleeping on the sea floor, but a few came up to visit briefly. Turtles are hard to distinguish from the coral on the floor due to algae growing on their shells, so it takes sharp eyes to pick them out. They sleep by getting big gulps of air at the surface, then swimming to a favorite spot and bracing themselves with feet/arms/fins/tail/head/whatever against the rock, wedging themselves into a stationary position. They look like the rock themselves. I enjoyed this part a lot, since I had turtles as a kid and always wondered how big mine would grow if I let him loose. I'm pretty sure he's not that big today, but you never know...

After a quick lunch and nap at the hotel, we went to the Maui Ocean Center. They had a good sized aquarium with plenty of seperate tanks to look at, one of which you walk through a glass tunnel under water. Very cool. I got a lot of pictures of rays, white and black tipped reef sharks, and sea turtles here. I only show the ones that looked pretty good, since a lot of mine were taken without setting up the camera right (I'm new, ok!) and got blurry bits here and out of focus bits there on some shots. I took about 60 pictures here alone, mostly of rays. They're pretty freaky looking.

For dinner, we went to Alexander's Fish & Chips in Kihei. We both had fried Ono fish and liked it and the 'chips' very much. It was the least expensive food we bought all trip. It's right next to a bunch of knick-knack shops that we'd missed last time, so we picked up a bunch more junk for friends. We went to bed early so we could get up really early the next day for our activities...

Tourist Pictures at the Ocean Center

Here bright fishy

Traditional Hawaiian canoe

Shark photos

Ray photos from the tube

Turtle pictures

Random eels and stuff

Day 5: Wednesday

The bike trip. Up at 2am so we could catch the sunrise bike tour from Haleakala's summit, next to the observatory. This is 10,000 feet above sea level. The drive was very scary, because the road was sheer drops off one side, rock cliff face on the other, and cloud banks blocking visibility every mile of the trip at night. At the top, we put on several extra layers of clothes and still were freezing. We watched the sunrise for over an hour, and I took pictures every minute or less, so I could make a smooth time lapse video when I got home. Haven't yet, but will sooner or later. An hour later, we started down the hill on BMX-like bikes with no gears and poor brakes. The gears weren't a problem, because we never pedaled but for a few seconds up a couple of short climbs; the brakes were slightly more important! We covered about 38 miles of downhill road in less than 2 hours total biking time! We stopped here and there to let people rest and to have breakfast. We went from freezing cold, through warming climate to the sun and strong winds, into rain on the north side, and eventually to the beach. Fantastic views, lots of fun, and plenty of danger for the excitement-seeker, especially for those afraid of heights. Breakfast was at Polli's Mexican Restaurant. The burrito was small and bland, but as a Texan chile-head, I'm hard to please when it comes to spice.

After getting back at past noon from the bike trip, a short nap and we're off! To Lahaina for lunch/dinner, targeting something in the Chinese/Italian way and finding, by sheer accident, that we'd missed Front Street entirely, where all the most interesting walking is for shops and restaurants. Everything from Hard Rock Cafe to local favorites were clustered on and off this street, with more clothing shops than anything else pressed in between. We stopped in to Jimmy Buffet's Cheese Burger in Paradise for a burger and fries, some T-shirts, and photos. No, I didn't take the shaker of salt. It was by far the best burger on the island, but not quite as good as some of the top talents in Austin. The fries were out of this world, though. Nothing like a beach front table to enjoy the sunset, too. We were literally 10 feet from the surf and 10 feet above the sand. Perfect.

One gallery sticks out in my mind, from the many art galleries there: a large collection of famous people, mostly musicians, and memorabilia signed by them. I almost choked on my tongue when I saw a gold album reprint signed by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Lots of other interesting items from the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, etc.

Freezing and tired on Haleakala

The crater at dawn looks like Mars

The view on the ride down

Cutesy couple pic

Amazing drive to Lahaina

At Cheese Burger in Paradise

I took this from our table!

Day 6: Thursday

Checkout. We were packed up the night before, so we got up early and split by 9am. We drove out to the North Maui coast, through Paia and toward Hana down the Hana Highway. There's nothing between the two towns, and no sign telling you that there's no gas stations for 45 miles, so we didn't realize it until we were half way there that we would run out of gas midway. A nice Hawaiian allowed us to buy a couple of gallons of gas from his reserve can. We were getting nervous we might miss our flight if we took too long.

The Hana Highway is a twisty road that connects Hana to the rest of the island. It is often reduced to one lane, where only a single car can fit through a bridge or around a blind curve, over a waterfall or through rainy cliffs. There's ferns growing wild at every step, perhaps 30 different waterfalls to look at without leaving the car, and a small bridge over each one. The road hugs the mountain side, so while it seems to take forever and the dips and curves are frightening and exciting, you're only driving 20 mph if you're a daredevil. After the 34 miles of curves and twists, only about 15 miles have gone by as the crow flies. This area gets about 400 inches of rain per year, or over an inch a day, whereas the rest of the island gets around 4 inches per year. Thus, this region supplies the rest of the island with water via pipes and pumps, I think. There's plenty of pictures of different parts of the drive there, and lots of scenery. The town of Hana itself is an unremarkable small town, except that it's a remarkably small town. The drive is the best part.

Oh, there's a lava tube cave tour that is just on the way into Hana that is well worth the price of admission. It was the cheapest thing we did on the trip and perhaps the most interesting and memorable. I'm a big caver, so I've been to several public limestone caves and explored a smaller one unguided as well. Lava tube caves are similar, but totally different. They follow an incredible logic that is written on the walls. Go there, if you have a chance. It's really neat and it's the only thing you can do in Hana rain or shine!

We made it back to the airport with a couple of hours to spare, at 5pm. The next series of plane delays began. We were delayed in Kahalui (where the airport is in Maui). The plane in Los Angeles was at a remote boarding station because of construction at the normal gates, so we had to take a shuttle bus there. Weird. That caused a 30 minute delay too. The plane at DFW was delayed 1.5 hours due to some landing gear accessory repairs. Overall, it was a very long day, because the 17 hours of travel was after 8 hours of touring North Maui, plus we lost 5 hours going to Texas. We got home by 7pm Friday. Sleeeeeep.

The incredible Hana Highway