First couple days of Maui are in the books. After around 30 hours of continuous travel and 7 total airports between the two of us we finally made it to our condo on the south of Maui. My record travel day went something like this: 2 hour shuttle to JFK from home, 3 hour wait at JFK, 5 hour 40 minute flight to LAX, 6 hour layover, 1 hour flight to San Francisco, 3 and a half hour layover, 5 hour flight to Maui, 2 hour bus ride to rent a car, then an easy ten minute drive to the hotel. So door to door right around 30 hours. Between Airborne and Vitamins I probably had enough a years worth of Vitamin C in my body, and being a firm believer in placebo effect it seemed to have helped one way or another and I didn't get sick at all. The best thing a traveler can be is flexible, so we took it all in stride, made the best of our long day and made the trip with ease. Kristen Actually had a completely separate itinerary due to the fact I had to book my flight on points and we had to buy hers. Her day went like this: arrive at BWI, gave up seat for $200 voucher, Hour cab ride to Dulles, 6 hour flight to Seattle, 7 hour layover in Seattle, 6 hour flight to Maui, where I picked her up and presented her with a fresh traditional Hawaiian welcome lei.
The condo is beautiful, and very comfortable, it is four floors up over looking the ocean with perfect views of the sunset, and as we found out this morning, a moonset, which is something I did not know was even real. We had a nice breakfast on the deck as the morning slowly awoken. We are still a little stuck on East Coast time, but are in no rush to convert, it will happen eventually. We went for a run along the water and picked up some sunscreen and water at the local general store. After relaxing for a while we headed to the beach, the weather is constantly changing. In the sun with no wind on the beach you feel like you are roasting alive, however with the sun behind clouds, a strong wind, and wet from the water you feel almost cold. We were on the beach for about 2 hours before getting the itch to explore so we showered and set off in our car to explore some of the island.
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| Moonset over the water from our balcony |
After showering and relaxing a bit we headed out to explore a part of the Island, our first stop was a really cool Black Sand beach. Formed from the breaking up of volcanic rock by the ocean, the pictures don't do it justice but it was the prettiest most unique sand we had ever seen. It was softer than I had anticipated, and we couldn't keep our hands off of it.
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| Black Sand Beach |
we continued on the road to Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve, it is an old coastal laval flow site and is covered with volcanic rocks as far as the eye could see. To one side is the Haleakala volcano and the other is laval rocks all the way to the ocean, it was something we have never seen before and gave a nice sense of connection to the formation of the Islands. Riding along we unexpectedly saw a few goats who looked like they were walking on the surface of Mars, the rain had moved in and it felt like we were transported to a different world. On the way back to the condo, we stopped at a rode side taco truck and got some delicious local fish tacos. Before getting home we also made a stop at the Monkey Pod, a nice local restaurant and I had a really good coconut porter and Kristen had a nice brown ale, both from Maui Brewing Company.
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| G.O.A.T |
After a long day of still being stuck on the wrong time schedule we headed to bed at a record early time of 5PM. We woke up around 1AM and had to pack our lunch and get our things ready for our Sunrise Bike tour of Haleakala Volcano. It wasn't tough waking up that wary considering we went to bed so early. The top of the volcano was freezing cold, and we waited for a good hour and a half before being rewarded with one of the most amazing sun rises we have ever seen, Mark Twain was quoted as calling it "the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed"
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| Sunrise over the volcano |
Back at the condo we rested, had some beers with lunch and headed to the beach for some sun...
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| Kristen at the office |
...after getting sufficiently burnt we headed to some local shops and came across some of the resident roosters roaming about.
A nice home cooked fish diner on the patio as the sun set, and of course local maui ice cream to top it off was the perfect way to end the long long day. Last day of being 25, not to shabby.
P.S I am trying my hand at a little video edit of all the stuff we have been doing so keep an eye out.
