January 2014 - Hawaii

Go straight to the pictures

My friend Kumi called and said "My parents have a condo  in Maui that  I can stay at for free.  I'm looking for a few friends to come with me.  Do you wanna go?"  I said yes.

This was the first time in a few years that I've gone somewhere that didn't require a passport.  It felt weird.  Except for the woman next to me who had a fear of flying, the flight to Kahului airport in Maui was relatively good.

I met my friends (Kumi, Samar and Alexis) at the airport.  (They flew in from San Jose.)  After much discussion about which rental car to get, off we went to the Days Inn.  This was not the condo we were going to stay in.  Our condo was booked by someone else for our first night.  (Busy season.)  So we stayed at the Days Inn for one night.  We transfered to our condo the next day.

We checked in.  Got something to eat at 5 Palms Restaurant in Kihei.  Thoroughly enjoyed the brief rainstorm.  (No, really.  It was heavy, but brief.)  Followed by a short nap and a little frolicking on the beach.

The next day, two of us slept in.  The other two got up at O-dark-30 to go diving.  (I slept in.)  I got up much later, had a leisurely breakfast, took a stroll, and got a few more pictures of the area around the hotel.

It was also transfer day. We transfered from the hotel to the condo in Kihei.  The condo was much nicer than the hotel and across the street from the beach.

Once settled in, we made a grocery run.  We wanted to have the option to eat in.  (Let’s face it, eating out every night in a resort town can be a tad expensive.)  After putting groceries away, we all retreated to our favorite spots in cyberspace for a bit, then went out to dinner at Cafe O'Lei.  Pretty much an uneventful, day.

Day 3, slept in late of course.  Then, snorkeling!  We went to Ulua beach in Wailea.  Visibility underwater was probably about 20 feet.  I took some pictures and, some unintended video.  (My camera works underwater, woohoo!)  But there is a noticeable difference between the pictures I took at Ulua and the pictures I took later at Molokini crater.  

We saw some fish, urchins, etc.  The real excitement happened when I was treading water and Samar shouted “There’s a turtle under you!”  I stuck my head back under water and saw a large sea turtle less than 3 feet away from me.  By the time I had my camera ready it had swam off.  We tried to swim after it, but we couldn’t catch it.  Luckily, a little later, we came across another one.  It was smaller, but I did get pictures.  After that, we pretty much called it a day and went back to the condo to eat.

We began the next day with a helicopter ride!  We flew with Sunshine Helicopters.  I'm not able to describe what we did.  The flight was about 65 minutes.  We saw waterfalls, steep cliffs, turtles, rays, whales...  Hopefully, the pictures speak for themselves.  I enjoyed it.  Though one among our group may have had a different opinion.

That night we went to Makawao 3rd Friday.  Sacramento people, think of this as 2nd Saturday.

The 5th day, we went to Hana.  We thought about driving, but decided to do a tour instead.  It was a good tour and took about 11 hours.  The van picked us up from our condo.  Then off to a Continental breakfast.  (Rant:  I hate Continental breakfast.  Whoever came up with the idea should be flogged.  No eggs.  No bacon.  It’s not breakfast!)  After “breakfast”, back in the van and off to Hana.

From Kahului, the drive to Hana takes approximately 2 hours.  It took us much longer because we made a lot of touristy stops along the way.  (Resulting in me taking a lot of pictures.)  The stops included Keanae Peninsula, Wai’anapanapa state park, and O’heo Gulch pools (aka  Seven Sacred Pools).  We were also served a very good lunch.  The last stop on the tour was a winery for wine tasting.  After the winery, our driver took us back to our condo.

I really can’t say enough about our driver.  Our driver “Pu” was awesome.  Though I can’t pronounce nor spell her full name, she made the trip very enjoyable.

Having done the tour, I do have a few observations:  You can drive yourself, but it is much nicer to ride in the van:

  1. They know where they're going
  2. They know the good places to stop
  3. They provide a good lunch
  4. The road in many places is NOT good
  5. Some places are "off the grid" so phones won't work
Also, the actual Hana part of the tour is only a few minutes.  The "Main street/business district" of Hana is very small.

Day 6 & 7 - Do nothing days.  Sleep, eat, sleep, eat, random walks.  Not necessarily in that order.

Day 8 - Snorkeling in the Molokini Crater.  Samar and I got on the boat at Kihei boat ramp.  (Kumi and Alexis were there an hour earlier.  They went diving.)  From there it was approximately a 15 minute trip to Molokini.

It is good place to go snorkeling.  Visibility was MUCH better than Ulua.  Inside the crater, the water is approximately 10-20 ft. deep.  Outside the crater, it’s about 250 ft. deep.

There is a good variety of sea life in the crater.  I managed to get pictures of a lot of it.  Unfortunately, since Molokini is so popular, they get a lot tour boats (people) too.

As soon as more boats showed up, our boat moved to back side of Molokini.  The spot we went to was called “The Elevator”.  That’s because the water level can oscillate 20 ft.  From there we went to 3 other places.  One was named “Turtle Town”  Another had a sunken boat.  After the boat, we returned to the boat ramp.

It was a good tour.  I would recommend it and do it again

It rained on the 9th day.  It did so for most of the morning.  At times, it was quite heavy.  It’s good though,  because Hawaii, like California, is going through a drought.  (However, unlike California, they got some rain.)  We did go out for breakfast at 808 Bistro, but that was it.  I stayed in and lived on the internet.  (Yay Hulu.)

The next day we flew back to California.

For those that missed it, my blog updates from my Hawaii trip are here:  Richard's Tumblelog.

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