Maui, Hawai’i Day 5-7 (Feb. 18-26, 2018)

Friday we went to the Big Beach. At this point in the trip our daughter was really getting into the boogie boarding and we thought let’s give her some big waves at the Big Beach. Unfortunately, she came back after just a few minutes as one of the waves had pummeled her. A few minutes later someone came on a portable loudspeaker telling the beach-goers that the waves are breaking hard at the shore and it was unsafe to board. Whoops! That was a bit of a bummer but we hung out on the beach for a while anyway and watched the crazies that chose to ignore the warnings.
 
For lunch we hit up a food truck that was literally sitting in the beach parking lot. I think it was the first time I’d ever tried fish nachos. Pretty much anything with fish or seafood in it on this island was phenomenal and the fish nachos were no exception to this rule.  In the evening we took the kids to a traditional Luau in Wailea. I will admit that this was the only meal I ate the entire 9 days on Maui that didn’t quite settle in my stomach just right. And that’s saying a lot as I have what you might call a sensitive digestive track and I was eating raw fish nearly every day!  Anyway, the weather, the gorgeous sunset and the talented dancers at the Luau made for a very enjoyable evening

Since we’d been eating breakfast at the condo most days on our last full day on Maui we decided to go out to breakfast not far from our condo at 808 Bistro. Here I got a deliciously savory dish with banana bread french toast on the side. Afterwards, you might have guessed that we went back to the beach. But this afternoon we did actually do something else. We hopped on a boat and went whale watching! A woman came up to me before we even left the dock asking if I was ok. I might as well have had a sign on my forehead that said “I AM MOTION SICK.” Luckily I’ve learned know hot to keep it in check for the most part. The area we went into was a whale sanctuary. We saw lots of big tails waving to us, baby whales learning to jump (just thrusting up their heads) and adult whales making full leaps. The adult leaps were few and far between but the 3-4 times it happened it literally took my breath away.

On day 7 we could’ve rested for what was bound to be a very long day (red eye flights back to the continental U.S.), but instead we decided to hit as many additional tourist sites as we possibly could in the daylight hours. First we drove up the Haleakala crater. I was worried about how cloudy it was but Maui guy said you always have to drive through clouds but that at the top it usually clears up. Boy was he wrong. Well he was right that we’d drive through them but nothing cleared up at the top. So I guess that hour and a half that my wife was hugging the steering wheel because the road was so close to cliff was all for nothing. I did take a few very cloudy pics here and there but I can’t say I have much to show for this adventure.

After the somewhat disappointing Halekala trip my wife and I figured we should sooth our souls with some wine from Maui’s only winery! We did a tasting of several different wines including a delicious syrah. But most unique were the pineapple wine offerings and the raspberry desert wine that was like 20% ACV. Dizamn that was strong! Luckily we were able to soak up some of that alcohol right across the street at what was clearly a cute little store and farm to table pub!?! We had fresh lamb and bison burgers with kimchi on the side. I can still taste it…yum yum yum!
 
After lunch it was off to a lavender farm. This adventure was on my wife’s list to do and while I wasn’t against  I figured we’d just see blankets of purple, take a few pics and call it a day but there were so many more interesting plants to see. Many stunningly unique views provided a plethora of photo ops.