This is going to be a little disjointed because I wasn’t very good about taking photos… or remembering what we did when… =D
We were in Maui to relax so a lot of time was just spent mosy-ing around or vegging out. It was great!
We stayed in beautiful condo complex called Kuleana. We got a great deal because they messed up our reservations and the place we originally tried to get was double booked. To make up for it, they bumped us up to a nicer condo at the same rate which was pretty awesome.
Unit #414 was home for a week.
And the gorgeous view from the deck.
Aimee and Mitch stayed about 5 min away so we spent a lot of our time hanging out together.
We found ourselves on Front St in Lahaina, with shaved ice, quite a few times on this trip.
Tako-san checking out the ginormous Banyan tree.
Dinner was at the Cool Cat Cafe which was yummy! I can’t speak to the meat but the veggie burgers were awesome!
Next day, we went to see lavender gardens near Mt Haleakala.
We had fun looking at all the funky plants they had growing alongside the lavender.
Ok this one actually IS lavender.
And the adorable corgis next door to the farm…
We ended back on Front St for lunch. Or maybe it was dinner… I can’t really remember now.
This guy was really funny. He was just toasting himself in the parking lot. If you got too close, he’d get up and move but as soon as you moved away, he’d sprawl back out on his cement block.
At Mai Tai’s.
Marcus likes his drinks to be really girly (fruity and sweet). He likes it when they put umbrellas in them too. =D
Food! Yum…
Monday, we went snorkeling near Black Rock after breakfast at the Gazebo. Aimee and Mitch had the underwater cameras so there might be some underwater photos I can post later. We saw a few turtles including one huuuuge one. They were super chill and didn’t seem to care about all the people around. And a shark swam past Mitch at one point! Shark was fast though, so no photos of him.
We had tickets to a luau that night.
Uh this is us killing time until the luau starts…
Aimee commenting on my inability to color. =D
At the luau:
The sunset was gorgeous!
They did a “tour” of the polynesian islands with dances from each island. And of course the requisite fire dancer:
On Tuesday, Marcus and I did the Road to Hana. It’s this crazy windy road along a beautiful coastline. You’re supposed to leave really early and stop a lot to see all the waterfalls. We decided to leave much later to avoid the mad rush and as Marcus commented: after seeing 2 to 3 waterfalls, they kinda all look the same. =D
Can you see the road winding around behind us?
Weird plant growing on the side of one of the cliffs.
We stopped a couple times to look at the more accessible waterfalls.
This one was really pretty, but the water was really really cold!
There were some adorable feral kitties in one of picnic areas. I kept trying to get Marcus to take photos of them and finally he was like, “I’m not filling up the entire camera with photos of wild kitties! You have two at home you take tons of photos of!”
Me: ^^;;; Ok how about some photos of the mongoose?
The mongoose. They were everywhere btw…
So the reason we hauled ourselves all the way out to Hana was to do powered hang gliding with Hang Gliding Maui. We read about it in the Maui Reveled book and it sounded really cool. It’s basically what it sounds like: a small engine powered vehicle attached to a hang glider wing. If the engine dies, and they actually cut the engine to land, you just use the hang glider to coast in. It was a ton of fun and I’m terrified of heights. =D
If you are ever in Maui, I really recommend you check it out!
You go up one at a time because the trike can only carry one person and the pilot. Armin flew us along the coast first. You can see the red sand beach in this photo that a lot of people hike to.
And then he flew us inland to these huuuuuge waterfalls that you could never get to on foot. You can kind of see one to the left in this photo.
And then he flew us through a bunch of clouds which was awesome… and really freaking cold.
Marcus took a longer flight than me (’cause he doesn’t get airsick), and Armin actually had him fly the glider for a bit. He tried to get me to do it, but I was just kinda like: Uh no thanks… how about you fly? ^^;
You can kinda see the river with a series of pools and waterfalls here:
And more waterfalls!
I feel I should point out that I did barf from motion sickness on the way back from Hana. =D But I did 2 hours of windy roads, 30 minutes of flying and another 2 hours of windy road before I lost it. If you know how bad my motion sickness is, you’ll realize that this is pretty damn phenomenal for me. =D
On wed, the boys went ATVing, and Aimee and I went shopping… cause we were told we aren’t allowed to ATV. =P
And then I think we just sat around by the pool. I played Phoenix Wright on my iphone. =D
Dinner that night was at a Captain something or the other restaurant (I can’t remember the name now), that had a vague pirate theme. I found this poster really amusing:
