Hawaii - The Rest of the Story

Thanks to everyone for all the positive feedback on my blow-by-blow of our recent vacation! I'm pretty sure this will be the last installment and I'll be back next week with something different. I'm still too much in beach-mode to actually put much effort into thinking about other topics for my blog this week. (And obviously, in previous posts I was too lazy to run spell check or proof read as you may or may not have noticed!)

So, our first full day in Maui was Tuesday. This also happened to be our anniversary so we had initially planned to book a snorkeling excursion for the morning and to spend the afternoon at the pool and beach. However, before we left we heard about a hurricane (Felicia) headed towards the islands. By the time we were in Maui, the hurricane had died down to a depression and we weren't in any danger but because it was supposed to hit the island on Tuesday, we thought it best not to snorkel that day. Of course, we woke up that morning to a beautiful day, but it was too late as we would have already had to book the excursion. Soooo, we talked about it and decided that Ben should go ahead and squeeze in a quick round of golf at a nearby course since we didn't know when or if the bad weather would come. (Much to Ben's friends chagrin, the hurricane/depression turned out to not be a big deal at all. Sorry you didn't have anything to laugh at, assholes) Ben took the camera to the golf course that day, so I'll share one of those photos. He'll have to comment here on the Kaanapali golf since I didn't ride with him. I spent the morning on the beach while he golfed and the rain did finally come in late that afternoon.

We went out for our anniversary dinner at The Plantation House at Kapalua. It was FAAAANNNTASTIC! And beautiful. You get a nice bay view as well as a view out over some of the pineapple fields there in Maui. We didn't quite make it there before sunset, but I would imagine it to be an ideal place to watch the sunset. I really wish I liked fish, because that was obviously their specialty -- but since I don't I ended up going with scallops over orzo and Ben went with the NY Strip. We shared a wonderful bottle of wine, called Amavi, it was a Cab, and I'm pretty sure it was from California. Try it if you find it in your local wine store. One funny little story from that night though. We were trying to decide what to order and Ben was leaning towards steak. He usually orders fillet, but he didn't want the side dish that came with it and wanted to substitute it for the truffle fries, which came with the NY Strip. Now, most nice restaurants don't really appreciate you doing this sort of thing, but will usually oblige your request. Not this one! Ben asked our waitress, who in turn asked the chef, who said that he would do it but that he would charge us extra for it. Well, that obviously pissed Ben off because he just said "fine, then tell the chef that I will instead have the NY Strip which DOES come with the truffle fries". He basically did that just as a matter of principle -- if the chef was going to be a Gary Stevenson about it, then he was just going to order a less expensive entree. Just to make a point. (I do this type of 'on principal' stuff all the time, maybe I'm rubbing off on him too much). Despite chef Gary's tude' we really did have an excellent meal.

We spent the next morning walking around Lahaina for a few hours, shopping and seeing the town a little bit. We took a million pictures (of course) but one of my favorites was of us in the Banyan Tree. This tree was planted in the late 1800's and literally takes up about a city block. It really is quite a sight, and a nice place to take pictures. (Although the tree is so big and shaded that it is difficult to get the lighting right with a point and shoot camera). Then we rented snorkels, had lunch at our condo, and drove around the island a bit for some snorkeling.

Ben is driving our 'bad pony'

Our first stop was Honolu'a bay on the very westernmost tip of the island.


The bay was extremely crowded with snorkelers, so I felt that my chance at becoming a shark's lunch was significantly decreased. I always like to have other shark bait in the water with me. I really didn't think the snorkeling would be all that good here, but as it turns out it really was pretty impressive. I don't know the names of everything we saw, of course, but I do know that we saw lots and lots of different colors and really, some pretty large fish. (Isn't that how you rate your snorkeling? Based on how many colors of the rainbow you see and the size of fish?) This is also the place where we took one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip.

We literally spent about 30 minutes working on this photograph!

After Honolu'a bay, we headed to Nipili (Ben, is that right?) beach for another round of swimming and snorkeling. However, when we parked the car, saw nobody on the beach, nobody in the water, and this sign we decided it might be wise not to stay there.

We drove around the Western part of Maui for a little while longer, stopping at various beaches and then went back to our hotel to watch the sunset.

After sunset, we got dressed and headed into Lahaina for dinner at this great place called Cheeseburger in Paradise. I know it sounds like we went to some cheesy Jimmy Buffet (uugggh) place, but a) this one is the original CiP and b) I've been here on both of my previous trips to Maui and they really do make a fine hamburger.

Okay, I guess I lied in my first paragraph because I said this would be the last installment but I feel like I'm getting a little wordy so I'm just going to finish later.