More Maui

Robin says it's time for me to catch up on some of our adventures and I image it's a good Sunday activity.

Rainy days and Tuesdays...

... well they didn't get us down. Actually, we've been very lucky. For the days we've spent on Maui, we've only had two rainy ones and Tuesday was one of them. We decided that we'd make the best of it and do some inside activities. First, we tried to go to the Maui Cultural and Arts Center, but it wasn't open until 11, so we went to the Queen Ka'ahumanu Mall (smart comment omitted) and browsed around. It really was coming down that day and the mall was a good place to hang. Robin met a lady working at American Eagle that was raised in Fargo ND... I swear, we meet people from North Dakota no matter where we go. She had fun talking with her and got some more tips on island living. I found a nice bookstore that kept me occupied until Robin finished.

After that, we decided to take the scenic route back home. Translation: Robin got to experience 500 foot drop-offs in the pouring rain up close and personal. I thought the Hana Highway was minimal… this one’s got it beat. It’s highway 30 that basically does the Northwest loop around the island. Surprisingly, there were more people on it than I expected and most were not locals. My timing was good though and I only had to back up twice to let someone by. Aside from a few muddy areas, the road wasn’t too bad and paved all the way. Since we were going counterclockwise, Robin had the best view of the coast. I kept asking her if she wanted to pull over to look and her reply was, “where?”

The scenic route took us a couple of hours to do. As we got closer to Napili, we came across an art gallery that we stopped at. Nice stuff but way too pricey.

[Robin:] I just wanted to say that Hal scared me to death because we ran into chickens in the road and there wasn’t enough room for both of us. We had to wait for the chickens to move before we could go on.

Rainy Wednesday

OK, this was a down day. But on the plus side I caught up on some movies I wanted to watch. I watched Babylon A.D. and Eagle Eye. Neither got very good reviews, but I enjoyed them. Can’t say I liked the ending of Babylon A.D. Kinda left you hanging or something. I’ve found that the key to watching SciFi is in not analyzing it… which is really hard as an engineer. Like if I go back and think about the movie much, it’s got more holes than a piece of Swiss Cheese.

We took a ride around some of the neighborhoods. There seem to be a lot of homes for sale, but that may just be the economy or that we didn’t look as close last time.

Swimming Sensation

Was sitting here thinking about the sensation of swimming. I’ve done more snorkeling this trip than the last and the water is nicer here than it was in Ka’anapali. There were a few times that I just floated around in the bay, especially over some of the rock formations. There’s a different sense of 3D as the surges lift you and you sway in the water. Mid-bay is probably 35 feet deep and there are some coral heads that are probably 8 to 10 feet around. As you float over them, you can really feel the sense of scale and dimension, especially with the fish and turtles swimming nearby. It’s very relaxing to take it in and enjoy the view.

The coral heads sit in white sand, so they look like they were dropped there. The coral grows on the volcanic formations that flow into the bay. The rim of the bay is black volcanic rock except for the small beach at the innermost part of the bay. There was typical coral formations, but more brain coral than I expected. There are also plenty of anemones of different varieties. As I was going out yesterday, one brushed the end of my finger and left what looked and felt like a paper cut.

During parts of the day, the turtles are basically in siesta mode. They don’t seem to like the sunlight because they usually position themselves in head first which shades their heads under whatever nook or cranny they find.