A Whole Lot of Whales

Wednesday was our last day on Maui.  The skies seemed to clear up just for us. 

I was surprised and pleased to see that the Maui Coast Hotel had a book of Buddhist teachings and the Bible in the nightstand.

What I liked best about this hotel was the refrigerator,  coffee maker and sink.  We were able to grab a quick breakfast without going out.

We decided on the Pacific Whale Foundation ocean tour.  They are a nonprofit organization to educate the public about whales.

The skies were still bright and sunny before we boarded The Liberty behind us.
 

They  guaranteed that we'd see a Humpback whale and kept that promise.  We saw a lot of females with their "escort" and often with a calf.

 They dropped a hydrophone into the ocean and we could hear the whales talking to each other.

The oceanographers told us that the whales' tails were like their fingerprints.  Our whale tour was 2 1/2 hours long but the time flew by quickly.

Our next stop was Sam Sato's in Wailuku for saimin noodles.  They only open until 2:00 and we managed to just squeak in.

Sam Sato's is known for having the regular wet saimin noodles...

 and the dry type which is just noodles with the broth served separately.

The next stop was the Iao Needle.  I got this from Wikipedia:

"The Hawaiian god Kāne is considered to be the procreator and the provider of life. He is associated with wai (fresh water) as well as clouds, rain, streams and springs. Kanaloa, the Hawaiian god of the underworld, is represented by the phallic stone of the ʻĪao Needle."

 This is when the rain started in earnest.

 These Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese gardens were in the same area but we didn't get to see them all because of the rain.

We had a couple of hours before our flight so we stopped by the Wailea resort area and did the beach walk.  It was a wonderful way to escape the rain.

This is another kind of Akulekule (ice plant).

We saw this Mejiro  (Japanese White-eye) sitting on a sprinkler.

It was a wonderful trip but we were all extremely tired.  Unfortunately, Sarah has caught a cold.  The funny thing is she began coughing on Thursday evening while we were watching Contagion together about a worldwide pandemic.  I'm hoping she's able to fight this cold before they have to leave for their journey to South America. 

I think we all need to just get to bed early and rest!

Please forgive me for not being able to visit for a few more days.

Tomorrow's post will be about the Honolulu Hapalua Half Marathon yesterday.  So much for rest.

(The Long and Winding) Road to Hana

Art and I were not crazy about going on the Road to Hana trip.  However, Jon and Sarah had heard it was wonderful so we had to try it.  We took the "kids" on it some 20 years ago and never made it to Hana. We turned around a third of the way and went back to the hotel.  With Jon driving this time, it was Hana or Bust!

We picked up some spam musubi (spam on rice square) and were on our way.  When we stopped at the Keanae Arboretum, we saw this car in the ravine that was sobering.

Looked like the ground was higher before.  I think.  I can't imagine how else this happened.

 With all the rains that were drenching the Hawaiian island chain, it would be a good idea to take these signs seriously.

Here, Jon and Sarah were standing in front of the Bagras (Painted Gum) Eucalyptus degulpta from Indonesia.

These looked like the smaller apple bananas that we like to eat for breakfast.

Mosquitoes shortened our walk.  There was also the threat of rain around every bend.

Jon wanted to see every beach that had high waves.  This was the Keanae Peninsula.

Actually this looks scarier than it actually was.  It was awesome to see the power of Nature.

You can see why these waterfalls are called the Three Bears.

When we stopped at Puaa Kaa State Wayside Park for our lunch this mongoose and his/her mate waited patiently to see if we would feed it.  We did not.

This is the first time I've seen a mongoose close up.  They're usually darting across the road.

This is a Mimosa pudica plant.  I love touching the leaves and seeing them close up.  It's also called the Sensitive Plant.

At the Waianapanapa State Park we saw a black sand beach and this old lava tube that opened up to the ocean.

The black sand beach was beautiful, but the waves were rough.  We were a little concerned to see a tourist try to go in for a swim.

After 5 1/2 hours we finally completed the 62 mile trip from Kihei to Hana and found the famous Hasegawa General Store.

Things were quite expensive there.  It's a lot cheaper if you go to the store down the street where the locals frequent.

 

Sarah and I had to buy some mugs to commemorate this long and winding journey.

We had trouble deciding where to eat the night before so I called an old elementary school classmate who lives in Kihei now.  Jasmine told me to go to Da Kitchen (2439 S. Kihei Road).  It was perfect, tasty, local type, reasonably priced food.  This is the Hawaiian plate with lau lau, white rice, kalua pork and chicken long rice.

This was a long, winding, tiring, but satisfying day.



(We've been back from Maui for four days now, but both mom and Sarah have caught respiratory colds.  Still, Jon and Art are both running their Half-Marathons today so it's a good thing they haven't caught colds... yet.  My post tomorrow will be about our third Maui day when we went whale watching.  I'll post about the Half Marathon after that.)

Maui No Ka Oi (Maui is the Best)

Since Maui is reputed to be the best, we decided to take Jon back to the island he visited when he was little and introduce Sarah to the beautiful scenery.  You do realize that Art grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii that he thinks is the best and I grew up on Oahu and think this is the best.... sort of.  I think Oahu is the best if you took away all the congestion, added a live volcano or two and safer drivers.

We considered going to Kauai for a while, but decided to go to Maui instead and bought our tickets two days before.  It was a good thing since parts of Kauai were declared a disaster area due to torrential rains in the following days.

We pride ourselves on being intrepid travelers.  I like (LOVE) my comforts, but I was outnumbered.  Even Sarah was in Africa with the Peace Corps and can keep up with our son cheerfully.

Like I said.... I was outnumbered.

We woke up at 3:00 Monday morning.  You'll notice I had blog posts scheduled well in advance because I knew blogging would be hard with Jon and Sarah always on the go.

Go! Airlines had cheaper flights but they're notorious for not being on time and having all kinds of scheduling difficulties.  We decided to go on Hawaiian Airlines.  Besides, my cousin is a Hawaiian Airlines pilot and I wouldn't want to tell him we chose to go on Go!

It was raining.

We got our Dollar rent-a-car at Kahului Airport on Maui and were on our way.  We watched the sun rise as we headed toward Makawao.

The reason for going to Makawao was to visit the famous Komoda Bakery.  Maui is known for having the nicest people, but people at Komoda seemed a little .... not so friendly.  Maybe they weren't quite awake yet.  We were there a little before 6:00.

It did not detract any wonderfulness from their baked delights.

This is what I selected.  Yes... it's true.  I got the stick donut, the guava malasada, the cocoa puff AND the cream puff.  And yes, with just a little help, I did finish all of it.  Yes, ALL of it.  I've not gone on the scale since returning, but Jon was shocked at how much weight he gained.  No matter.  He's running the Half Marathon with Art.

At 7:30 we left Makawao and headed for the summit of 10,023 ft Haleakala.

It's famous for the silver sword plant which only grows here and on the Big Island.  This was not the season for flowering.  Summer is the silversword blooming season.

It was COLD!  The rangers told us it was 40 degrees F, with wind chill 30 degrees!  I'm glad we brought wind breakers, but I wished we brought down coats.

Every so often the clouds would part to give us a glimpse of the crater.

Jon and Sarah decided to forgo the hike they were going to take.

I thought this was a quail, but it is an Alectoris Chukar which was introduced from Asia in 1923.  I've never seen this bird in Hawaii before.  It's some kind of partridge.

We were trying to use each other for a wind break when we asked a nice tourist to take our photo in front of the crater that you can't see because of the cloud cover.

Dropping down to a lower elevation, it was slightly less freezing so we decided to take a "little" hike.

We didn't see much wildlife.

However, back at the parking lot, this Hawaiian Nene goose walked right past us. 

The Nene is our state bird.

We took a short stop to watch whales along the coast.

We drove into Lahaina which was a whaling port.  I think we liked the block sized Banyan tree the best.  Otherwise, Lahaina is really a congested, high priced tourist mecca.

I think we managed to the find the only free parking lot in the whole town. They have two that we know of for sure, but the other one was full.

By now we (actually it was mostly me) were exhausted and drove on to Kihei where we had booked two nights at the Maui Coast Hotel.

I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.