Maui Uber Post

No educated editorial banter here, just a journal-style rambling of our activities of the last week.
We've taken it pretty easy but done a few specific things, I guess. Tuesday evening we went into the 'big' city of Kahului and did some shopping, picking up a few items needed for the condo and we got ourselves some inexpensive tennis rackets. Wednesday was pretty relaxed, don't think we really did anything specific other than our first tennis match.

Thursday was our first day sans-friends and we went out to the area I really like snorkeling at, Ahihi Bay, but this time we went past it into the Laparouse Bay lava fields that are now a nature reserve. We parked and then hiked about a half-mile down the road and then at 45 feet before the second to last telephone pole before the poles switch to the other side of the road we took a trail about a mile across the lava fields to a great little spot called 'fish bowl'. The 'fish bowl' was almost entirely protected from the ocean and had very little waves which made it great for Tricia especially. We saw a couple things we hadn't yet seen, like some pencil (sea) urchins, and a few crazy fish, names TBD.

Friday was our big surfing day. There was a $10 savings per person if we took the lesson 30 minutes away in Lahaina. Since Lahaina happens to be quite close to Ka'anapali, another nice resort area where we had spent our last night on our previous trip, we thought we'd take it there and make a day-trip out of it. We packed out lunches and drove up there right after the market close. We started with some souvenir shopping at the Whaler's Village for gifts and such, and then we walked along the beach for a little snorkel at Black Rock, sans flippers which makes it quite challenging. After our snorkel we sat on the beach for a bit, at our sandwiches, and enjoyed the view with our toes in the sand. Before we knew it it was time to motor on over to our Surfing lesson.

The surfing lesson was fun, our instructor Lucas was from Brazil and a real riot. Knowing that I had surfed a bit before he decided to make me go on the big waves, but his instruction helped a lot and he was able to point out what I was doing wrong, etc. Trish also did really well and it was a good intro to surfing. Our lesson seemed to start a bit late, maybe it was on island time, and potentially went a bit long as well. In light of that we didn't get back to our car until about 5:23pm and we had a reservation for dinner at 6:30pm.

Normally this wouldn't sound like a challenge, however we were approx. 45 minutes away from the condo, quite salty and sandy, and then another 10-15 minutes from our dinner reservation. Trish decided we could rise to the challenge and after 3 minute showers and lightning-quick ready-getting we made it to our reservation only a few minutes late. The mai-tai for two that the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a served seemed to do a great deal of calming. The lovely sunset, rushing waterfall in the background, and 40,000 gallon fish filled salt water lagoon probably also influence our calmness.

Saturday was another pretty relaxed day for us. We spent some time by the pool, some time in our place, and sometime at the beach. We BBQ'd some Ono (a white fish) for dinner and had a fairly chill evening.

On Sunday we again went back to Hope Chapel, our friend's church. We really enjoy the worship and the pastor's quite funny. If we were ever to be in Kihei on a more extended time frame we could certainly make that our home. After that we grabbed our day stuff and headed up to Pia'a on Maui's North Shore. We decided to have breakfast at Charley's a famous eatery that serves one of the most massive buttermilk pancakes I've ever seen. Once we were thoroughly stuffed we went over to Hokipa Beach to watch the windsurfers for a little while. Their speed and skill is quite amazing. We didn't see any kite-boarders this time, which is good, since there wouldn't be any thing visual to tempt us into it. It'll have to wait until SouthEast Asia. Since the North Shore is so windy we decided to just head back over to Kihei to hit the beach, especially since it was about 1pm and we like to try to stay out of the sun during the sun's hottest rays. After chillin' for a bit we grabbed some beach chairs and hit the beach to partake in the locals regular weekend activity... sitting on the beach. For dinner we BBQ'd a couple teriyaki chicken breasts and enjoyed some beverages but then I ate too much and felt sick. Boo.

As for what's on store this week... who knows? But the weather forecast has been getting better each day, so far so good. We'll have to see if our last couple of days turn out nice or not.