Maui #2 - Of Planes & Palm Trees

Actually getting a new trip underway is always exciting. I spend so much time planning, sometimes I feel I've already taken the trip, even before leaving! But this trip has possible adventures I've never experienced before ... sunrise from the top of a volcano, humpback whales in the waters by our condo, snorkeling in tropical waters ... this holiday has lots of adventure potential!

Our trip here was relatively simple. Or so we thought! One flight from Toronto to Vancouver and one flight from Vancouver to Maui. Ha! The flight to Vancouver went quite well -- it was very smooth and less than five hours. However, the fun began when we arrived in Vancouver. We had a layover of about 1 1/2 hours. In that time, we had to go through US customs, including claiming our checked bags and getting them through customs, as well. When we entered the Vancouver terminal, we discovered that we had to go from one building to another AND we had to find our way pretty much on our own. Because these terminals are under construction, there are temporary access routes, poor signage and confusing instructions. We must have asked six different people where we were supposed to go and received six different sets of instructions. No one seemed to care. For a while, we wandered around the shopping area, looking for a mythical duty free shop that also contained the entrance to US Customs. This whole episode was beyond belief. Ultimately, we made it to our gate (which wasn't the one we'd been told to go to) with less than 10 minutes to spare. Whew!

Hilary was a trooper, trailing behind me as we flew through the terminals, frantically looking for the right place.

Once we made it onto the second plane and were airborne, we spread out a bit since the flight wasn't filled. This was great because we were hoping to get a few hours of sleep on this six-hour flight. Then the First Officer came on the PA system and gave his usual spiel of weather and flight times. Then he said, "Those of you who have flown this route before know that, at this time of year, we can encounter a fair bit of turbulence. Please keep your seat belts fastened. If we do encounter turbulence, we will wake you up to make sure your seat belt is secure."

Great. 

Hilary slept for a few hours, but I don't think I did more than doze between periods of turbulence. I've been through worse, but turbulence is always nerve wracking.

Nevertheless, we did get into the Kahului Airport about 20 minutes early. We made the connection with our car rental office and even found our condo in the dark. It was a challenge. I was trying to figure out how the car worked ("Hilary, where are the lights?! Hilary, can you see how to open the trunk?"). Such fun! But we found our parking spot, found out how to open the condo lock box and door, hauled our luggage into the apartment and crashed! We slept a good five or six hours -- sleep I sorely needed.

Today has been a series of small errands and quiet time in the pool. (We're trying to conserve our strength for tonight's adventure.)

We started out with breakfast at Denny's down the street. I'd read about the high prices of food here -- both in restaurants and in grocery stores. Well, at Denny's the breakfast prices pretty much started at about $9. Yikes.

After breakfast, we headed to a nearby grocery store to stock up. I studiously avoided monitoring the prices here. We just bought what we'd need for the next week or so.

After putting the food away, we headed to the pool and hot tub for some serious soaking. The pool is large and doesn't seem heated -- very refreshing! The hot tubs were wonderful!

After lunch, we took a walk on the beach. Kamaole (Kam-ay-ole-ee) Beach III is just across the street from us (our condo is located at Kamaole Sands). It really is beautiful with lots of soft sand, grassy banks, trees and spots of beautiful rocks. We examined some of the tide pools and saw a number of critters in them.

This short taste of the ocean was followed with more time at the pool and then we headed to Snorkel Bob's where we picked up the snorkeling equipment we'd ordered. For myself, I had arranged for an mask that has special lenses that are fairly close to my own eye glasses prescription. In fact, in a pinch, I think I could drive with them if I had to! The sales people were really helpful. Part of our gear package included net bags to haul our equipment around in. They showed us the bin, filled with red, green, yellow and purple bags and said we should take our pick. We started to take bags from the top, when the young guy who was waiting for the next customer took one look at Hilary and said, "There's a pink bag in there!" I started to laugh. Hilary, of course, was dressed in pink from head to toe. That is one observant sales guy! The sales girl helping us told us about the whales that winter in the this bay. She said it was like whale soup out there. This I'm really looking forward to seeing!

After a short shopping trip to Wal-Mart, we came back here for supper and are fading fast. Hilary is already sitting in bed, watching tv. I keep losing my train of thought ... did I say I was tired? Let me see if Hilary will contribute anything to this entry.

HILARY:

It's warm here. There are lots of palm trees and flowers. The water is warm. It rained last night and this morning -- hard. It was windy. We went shopping at Wal-Mart and I bought souvenirs for people. At Denny's this morning a bird flew in the open window. Tonight we're going to go to the top of the volcano and watch the sunrise and then we're going to go snorkeling. That's about it.

Tonight's adventure is to find our way to the top of the volcano. We had a bit of a dry run today since Wal-Mart is on the route to the mountain highway. We'll have to leave about 3:30 in order to get to the mountain top in time to see the sun leap out of the eastern ocean! This adventure is very popular and the mountaintop can be very crowded. My expectation is that there will be a conga line of cars and tourist busses heading toward the peak. I hope! :)

We'll try to bring you up to date on the cold early morning -- hopefully with a spectacular display of sun and cloud!

Aloha!