MAUI WOWIE!

(This is another in a series that tells the story of our travels earlier in the year to San Diego, Hawaii and Australia.)

MOWIE WOWIE!

            As our Alaska Air flight descended towards the tiny specks of land in the Pacific Ocean, we finished our welcoming Mai Tai’s that were served by the airline.  The fruity drinks with a touch of rum were a refreshing end to our six-hour flight from San Diego.  The Boeing 737-800 flew in over the Hawaiian island of Maui and touched down at the Kahului Airport.  After departing the plane we had a surprise “Lei Greeting” in the lobby as we were adorned with necklaces of local flowers and directed to where we could pick up our rental car.   

            I drove our Chevy Cruze south for almost an hour to Ka’anapali Bay where we checked into the Sheraton Maui Resort Hotel.  Our corner room on the fifth floor had not one, but two balconies overlooking the beautiful bay.  After settling into our room and lolling around on the larger balcony, we looked around the hotel complex for a while before taking the beach walk south along the bay.  As we were walking along, we noticed people on the beach pointing out various waterspouts out in the bay as whales swum by.  (This would be a harbinger of what was to come the following day on our whale-watching cruise.)

            We did some shopping in a little mall stuck in between the numerous resort hotels along the beach.  We still needed to get gifts for some little ones awaiting us Down Under.  I also purchased a Hawaiian shirt so I could look more like a guy from Wisconsin trying to look like a guy from Hawaii.  We stopped at the Hula Grill for an early supper on the patio overlooking the beach.  I had a great Mai Tai, this one spiked up some with a healthy dose of dark rum, to go with our great fish and chips, that was quite similar to a good Friday Night Fish Fry that we might have back in the Badger State.

            We walked back along the bay to our hotel and had a drink at the Tiki Bar next to the hotel pools. As we watched a beautiful sunset across the bay, the Black Rock Ceremony began.  The Black Rock is a prominent projection of a black lava cliff that reaches out into the Ka’anapali Bay.  Each evening the story is told of how the first people to inhabit Maui considered the Black Rock to be sacred, since it protected the bay from the roils of the Pacific Ocean beyond.  So, each evening, a series of torches are lit along a trail that runs along the top of the rock formation.  When the torch lighter gets to the end of the rock where he lights the last torch, he offers thanks to the Gods of Hawaii for the bounty of the land and then dives seventy-five feet down into the bay below.  It is quite a good story and an even better show that was a great way to finish our first day on Maui.

            Our whale watch cruise was the highlight of our second day on Maui.  That morning, we saw a couple of spouts from humpbacks cavorting in the bay from our balcony.  After breakfast we went down to the beach to board our Teralani Cruises catamaran for our whale watching experience.  When we met the Teralani personnel on the beach, they had us take off our shoes and socks because we would board the catamaran in the surf.  It would be a barefoot cruise for the two-dozen people aboard the boat.  Once we got everyone on board (we had no trouble, but a couple of people were swamped with a sudden wave as they boarded and had plenty of drying off to do on the sunny day.) we moved out into Ka’Anapali Bay to view the great sea-going mammals.  There were whales everywhere!  As we learned later, the El Nino occupying the Pacific this winter had caused the warmest waters to be centered on the Hawaiian Islands and all of the humpbacks were attracted to it.

            We saw whales breaching on both sides of the boat, cow and calf combinations swimming along side and interested whales following along on our trip.  At one point we had to move our catamaran over near another whale watching raft that could not get rid of an attentive bull.  With the whale so close, they could not start their engines to return to shore.  So our catamaran came to the rescue and attracted the whale over towards us so the other boat could leave.  The whale was intrigued by our shouts and whistles and swam around our boat for a quarter of an hour before swimming off. 

            Despite there being near-record numbers of humpbacks in Maui, the tour boat operators can identify the individual whales by the distinctive white markings on their fins and tails.  Those white marks glow an eerie fluorescent green or blue in the water and provide quite a site for a couple of Kickapoogians.  With so many whales to see (I’m guessing that we probably saw more than a hundred humpbacks while we were out on the tour.) we were nearly an hour late in getting back to the beach to disembark. Amazingly, the only negative aspect of the tour was getting my feet sunburned that morning!

            After lunch, Carolyn went shopping and ran into Jeff Bridges in the hotel gift shop.  He was going to be putting on a couple of shows at the hotel on the day we left and was looking for some Hawaiian-looking clothes and a hat to wear.  “The Dude” had breakfast a few tables over from where we ate on the lanai the next morning.  (It was probably best that we left Maui when we did because you can’t have two “Dudes” in that close of proximity.)

            That evening we celebrated a luau on the grounds of the hotel.  We sat with a family from Missouri and enjoyed the Hawaiian music and dancing.  (With sufficient fortifications from a few Mai Tai’s, I was even able to hula a bit.)  Roast pig is a part of the tradition of the luau and they cook the porker underground using rocks heated in a fire.  We went over to the fire pit as they dug the pig out and watched the chef carve it up for dinner.  Poi, from the taro root, is also a tradition at luaus and we had the lavender colored poi sauce over our lavender colored baked potatoes.  (The bread was also a lavender color, so I suppose that was made from taro as well.)  We topped the meal off with a heavenly almond flavored rice pudding for dessert.

            “The ‘Road To Hana’ must not be missed”.  So said basketball analyst Bill Walton during one of the games at last November’s Maui Invitational basketball tournament broadcast.  (By the way, when we were in San Diego, we drove by Bill Walton’s house.  It is a very distinctive place overlooking one of the deep canyons of that area.  But what makes it a particular standout in the neighborhood is a large permanent teepee in the front yard.  Bill apparently uses the teepee for spiritual and other recreational activities.  BTW-2, the Wisconsin Badgers will play in this year’s Maui Invitational – perhaps something for a couple of Kickapoogians to attend?)

            So, taking the advice of my favorite buckets guru, we checked out the highway on our third day in Maui.  We had picked up some information on the trip from our hotel concierge, who had advised us to start early and drive carefully as the road was very winding.  Now, having grown up in the Kickapoo Valley, I am used to driving on winding roads.  Old Hwy 131, which used to follow the winding river through the Kickapoo valley was just about as curvy and winding a road as could be found and I cut my teeth driving on that road back in the day.

            In my opinion, the “Road To Hana” might also be named the “Road To Hell”!  The brochures about the road boast of the thousands of sharp turns (most of them of the hairpin variety and up or down steep grades) and over sixty one-lane stone bridges along the forty-plus mile route.  Besides those, there are numerous other places on the highway (and I use the term highway loosely here as some of the route might better be named PATH!) where the road narrows to one-lane stretches that demand numerous pullovers to let oncoming traffic pass.  It is intense driving – you cannot take your eyes off the road for a second!  There are mile after mile of luscious scenery along the highway, but this driver did NOT see much of it.  To make matters worse, it was raining for most of the trip towards Hana.  We stopped at Twin Falls, but could only view the smaller falls as the road to the bigger one had been washed out by torrential floods earlier.  After driving for over two hours, we pulled in at the food stands at Nahiku. We bought some coconut chips from Jungle Johnny and had lattes and brownies for some late morning sustenance.  After checking the maps, we found we were still over ten miles from Hana and I was virtually driven out!  We turned around to return to Pa’ai, where the road had begun.

            The sun came out, it warmed up and the driving was somehow easier and much more enjoyable for me.  We stopped at a couple of overlooks along the way at Ke’anae and Kailua – spots with spectacular views of the rugged and wild coastline.  When we arrived in Pa-ai, we had some of our Maui Chips (recommended) while watching the surfers at the local beach.  We saw a few whales out in the deeper water there – as I said before – the humpbacks were everywhere in the waters around the islands of Hawaii.

            Later we learned from some friends who had been to Maui, that the best way to see the “Road To Hana” is aboard a tour minibus or van.  (That would have been nice to know beforehand!)  Live & Learn.