Molokai & Maui 2013
It's Christmas Eve, we walked right through the living room sized open-air airport and boarded a little Mokulele Airlines Cessna for our flight to Maui. We would spend Christmas and New Years on a very different island from Molokai.
Kaunakakai Wharf, Molokai 
Eastern hills of Molokai
MAUI
It's been over 14 years since the last time we were on Maui, Oh Boy have things changed! This isn't the cute little Hawaiian Island anymore.
We picked up our car after getting our luggage, it's the last compact available... a Honda Fit. Our luggage fits, all standing on end. Quickly we get out of the rental car agency, and then proceed to sit in traffic for the next 30 minutes. It's over an hour later when we get to our home for the next 11 days, The Mauian, a boutique beach hotel centered on Napili Bay. The whole drive up the west coast we are passing big resorts and shopping malls, stopping at traffic lights... I don't remember Maui being like this the first time we went to Hawaii.
Our "partial ocean-view" patio Our mini-kitchenOur neighbours "tidy" patio
Our Room Our View
Shuffle-Board Swimming Pool
the BBQ Area Gord the Gecko
It all seemed amazing, nice room, just a few steps from the Napili Bay Beach, what could possibly be wrong?
We checked out the beach briefly, before heading to the nearby Napili Plaza for some groceries. Norine was still feeling under the weather so we got some drugs at the pharmacy (there is no pharmacy on Molokai), and then we grabbed some Fish Tacos at Maui Tacos for lunch.
Christmas Eve wouldn't be complete without a Hawaiian sunset. We made a reservation for dinner when we were still on Molokai using an app called Open Table. A lot of the restaurants were booked up, so not sure what we would get at the Hula Grill in Kaanapali. So, for those of you that were following along on my Facebook posts through our holiday, I will apologize now... Maui became the island of amazing food, and if you were looking for great sunsets and beach shots on FB, all you got was pictures of food... sorry about that.
The Hula Grill was a great choice, the food and service was excellent, we had crazy amounts of seafood for Xmas Eve dinner. Dinner was topped off with what was called a 'Baked Hawaiian'... Pineapple upside down cake with meringue, chocolate and pineapples.
We stop to check out the amazing Christmas light display at the church by our hotel. What a nice Christmas Eve.
It's Christmas morning on Maui, how do we know? All the kids in the hotel are up screaming and yelling right outside our room at 6:30am, at 7:30am the traditional Christmas smoothies are being blended next door. All of the windows in our room are just screens.
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaiian for Merry Christmas!
Since we are awake, we head over to the Dining room for our free continental breakfast, and then walk down to the beach.
The water is amazing, smooth sand, perfect for sand sharks, clear water, and just a tiny bit of surf, perfect for swimming and floating. Apparently it's also perfect for all the tenants of the hotel, as well as walk in visitors... this isn't our private Molokai beaches.
I left Norine in a beach chair, and escaped the crowds by swimming out from the beach and snorkeling. That was one huge bonus of this beach, there is a great snorkeling reef just 30-40 ft off the shore. A short swim out, and I'm "swimming with the fishes".
After a sunny day on the beach, we rinsed off the salt water in the pool, and prepared to head out for Christmas dinner. It was another place we had booked with Open Table while we were on Molokai... Pulehu, an Italian Grill. Our traditional Christmas dinner on Maui started with a Longboard Lager, and ended with Oreo crust Chocolate cheesecake with semi-frozen macadamia nut mousse and raspberries... OMG!
Mele Kalikimaka!
Boxing Day is a Canadian holiday, not an American holiday, at 7:00am the neighbours kid is standing right in front of our place yelling at a kid in the room above us... "Ryder!... Ryder!...Ryder!..." It's like a pint-sized Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Then at 7:30am it gets worse, a building behind our room is under construction, and saws start roaring, it's all just building up to the 8:00am Boxing Day Smoothies.
Whether it was the lack of sleep or the cold getting worse, Norine wasn't feeling well, so we had a low key day reading at the beach. Today even more people have come down to the beach area in front of our hotel. After some lunch, I escaped the crowds again and went snorkeling for a little while.
As I am exploring the reef, a shadow comes beside me, and a giant sea turtle is right there. Below is the last underwater picture taken before my underwater camera filled with water and died. But... I got to swim with a sea turtle on Boxing Day, beats a Future Shop lineup.
Tonight we went to the Plantation House at the Kapalua Golf Course for dinner, it was probably the most expensive dinner we would have.
It ended up being a much more expensive night than we planned, Norine could barely eat the food as her throat was so sore. We ended up heading to a clinic called "Doctors on Call"... they were fantastic, checked her out, gave her a variety of meds to get her better, including a needle. 30 minutes later we were on our way home with a nice new charge on our C.C., we'll see if our insurance covers that.
Dear Diary, this morning I cannot go to the beach. It is raining, and I might get wet.
If any day was going to rain, today was a good one. Norine was recovering, the rain kept the kids away, and somehow we fell back asleep when the saws started up. Perfect day for sitting on our patio and reading. Somehow we were magnets to birds all day, at first little chickadees kept trying to wander into our room, then a couple pigeons just wandered over and nested on our patio with us.
WAIT! Is that our favourite screaming kid/Smoothie making family walking away with all their luggage... best day EVER!
In the resort next door there is a nice beachside restaurant overlooking the bay, so tonight we wandered down the beach as the rains had stopped and had a great dinner at the Sea House Restaurant. Mai-Tai's to start and the most amazing seafood yet.
Hopefully we can sleep in tomorrow.
Now that the holidays are over, it seemed like a good day to head to the big city of Kahului and go to Costco to get some groceries and maybe see if they had a replacement underwater camera on sale. Turns out they did, the Nikon underwater camera was $100 off... deal.
As we were wandering the aisles choosing supplies for the week, we ran into Wally Buono, the GM of the B.C. Lions... I said "Merry Christmas Coach", and embarrassed he smiled and said "Thank you, you too". Who expects someone to know you at a Costco in Maui?
Costco's are funny, the odd people, and combine that with a Costco that is selling all kinds of booze and fireworks just before New Years Eve. Who brings their monster truck to Costco to go grocery shopping? How the hell do you get the groceries in the back?
With our supplies all stocked up in the back of the car, we head to the historic oceanfront street of Lahaina. Lahaina used to be the Capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii, now it's tourist central with it's mix of restaurants, galleries and tourist shops.
Our first stop would be the famous Cool Cat Cafe, known as having the best burgers in Hawaii. I had a Don Ho Burger with bacon and Jack cheese, including pineapple and sweet Hawaiian sauce. I washed that down with a Chunky Maui Monkey Milkshake.(Chocolate ice cream loaded with chunky peanut butter, chocolate chips, and a fresh banana). We were almost too full to walk when we left.
In a park under a giant Banyan tree, local crafts people were showing their wares, we ended up buying an amazing glass and wood piece featuring angel fish dancing around a piece of wooden coral.
We did as much shopping as we could, wandering store to store, and shortly after the sun went down behind Lanai, we had had about enough. We took our souvenirs, including a pineapple ornament for the Christmas Travel Tree, and drove back to the room. We were still too full to even think about eating dinner, so Mick Fleetwood's new restaurant was not even an option.
It was kind of weird, we slept in... there was no screaming kid, no smoothie-making-blender since they had gone home. There was no saws and hammering on the construction behind us... oh yeah, it's Sunday. It was kind of a dream morning, what I hoped vacation would be.
We spent a little time on the beach, and then wandered down to the other end of the bay to a little breakfast/lunch place called The Gazebo. Nothing fancy, but good sandwiches with an amazing view.
The resort where the restaurant is looks nice, but the Napili Shores resort probably has the worst beach ever.
We climb over the volcanic rocky shore and head back down the beach to our hotel, which maybe has the nicest and calmest little section of Napili Bay. That becomes evident when it's a Sunday and people have come from all over to set up in our sand, this isn't Molokai. Before the sun goes down, most everybody leaves, and we have our beach back to watch the sky change colour.
Tonight we would try another restaurant with a high rating from the OpenTable app, Black Rock Steak & Seafood on Ka'anapali Beach.
Tucked inside of the huge Sheraton Maui resort, we wind our way through the complex, past the gingerbread house display, and eventually find the restaurant. This was made even more difficult by the fact that there is no sign with "Black Rock Steak & Seafood" on it in the whole complex, just the occasional "Restaurants" sign. The first time we actually saw the name was when they seated us at the prime view table and handed us the menus. The seafood was amazing, sadly though, the service was terrible, and the temperature with the wind blowing was quite chilly, but they wouldn't move us. We waited well over an hour for our main course, then 30 more minutes to get the bill when we were done. The waitress offered to buy me another beer for waiting so long, when I refused that she offered a free dessert, after freezing and waiting for almost 2 hours now, we chose to skip dessert.
Maui is truly famous for one thing, a road... affectionately known as the 'Road to Hana'. Highway 36 takes you from the town of Paia to the lost in time town of Hana on the far South-East coast of Maui, it's 42 miles, 54 bridges, and 600 hairpin turns on a narrow windy road, that is often reduced to a single lane. You have to stop numerous times to allow oncoming traffic to pass you. Although you can't drive fast, and you have to pay close attention to the road, and the road ahead, it is a beautiful drive, and a must do when you are on Maui.
We got up early and headed out on the highway.
It was pouring rain as soon as we got onto the start of the highway, so we skipped a lot of the stops hoping the weather would be nicer on the way back. Nothing was quite as welcome as the "Halfway to Hana" signs, so we could stop for a pee break, and buy some of the-best-banana-bread-on-the-planet. Small loaf 6$, best money spent, ever!
With a smile on our face after eating half a loaf of Banana Bread (Did I mention how good this bread was?), we continued on in the rain, twisting, turning, and stopping to admire the rather damp scenery. With all the rain, there was waterfalls everywhere.
As you drive along, you see where the locals have setup fruit and flower stands on the side of the road. Help yourself, and leave the money in the jar. This is very different from most any other destination in the U.S. of A.
The Christmas decorations on this end of the island are a little less traditional, or is that more traditional?
We are sent on a slight detour due to some bridge construction, it's a nice detour as it takes us past the lovely and inviting Koki Beach.
The nice sign that the locals have put up had us rethink any notions of going for a swim, that's ok, it was still raining.
A few more twists and turns and we enter the small village of Hana, for the purpose of time, we continued past Hana to the Haleakalã National Park. Effectively this is the end of the road, you can go a little further, and then it turns into a rough dirt road that rental cars are banned from. The timing was perfect, as the rains stopped just before we arrived.
This park has a few natural attractions, the first is 'Ohe'o Gulch or the "Seven Sacred Pools". In reality there are more like 24 pools and the National Park Service and Hawaiians would prefer that this area be referred to as Kipahulu or 'Ohe'o Gulch. We decided it made more sense to check out the pools after we did a hike. Still not sure if that was a good idea or not.
The second attraction of this area is the Waimoku Falls Trail which takes you past Makahiku Falls, through a bamboo forest and ultimately to Waimoku falls. The 4 mile round trip hike is well worth it, even though it's mostly all uphill on the way there with a mix of steps, roots and muddy trails. That means it's all downhill the other way, right?
The sights along the trail are beautiful, sneak peaks of pools, smaller falls such as Makahiku Falls, and giant banyan trees.
The trail completely changes when you cross the bridge and enter the Bamboo forest, boardwalks take you through a sheltered tunnel of trees where the winds create a drum-like cacophony of hollow Bamboo poles clacking together.
As you step out of the forest, you are presented with a scene right out of Jurassic Park, the Waimoku falls are the largest on Maui, dropping over 400 feet into a rocky pool.
After hiking back out of the trail, the crowds are too much at the pools, and we are too exhausted to hike another 1/2 mile down to those crowds, so we head back to the car and start working our way back to the town of Paia.
The pools before the hike The pools after the hike
Since the rains had stopped, driving back along the windy and narrow road was much nicer, we could stop and admire the scenery we had missed on the way in, seaside views, unique flora, and roadside waterfalls.
One of the mistakes we made was to check out a small village called Lower Nahiku. It took forever to drive down the steep single lane driveway like road, only to see a small church and rocky shore. We could have found another waterfall somewhere else, but at least there was some memorable oddities about the village that we could look back on.
We didn't waste much time there and got back up the hill to the Hana Highway.
Just as it started getting dark, we were back in Kuau Cove near Paia for our reward, reservations at the world famous Mama's Fish House.
Words don't really describe this restaurant, set right on the shore of a surfers paradise, you sit in the open air restaurant watching and listening to the pounding surf. The decor is a mix of 5 star and historical, with objects and photos of days gone by. The wall as you come in is full of photos and autographs of the who's who of the entertainment, sport and political world, there is a reason why.
The menu is full of delicious options, including the name of the fisherman that caught the fish earlier that day. Norine chose the Lobster and Crab stuffed Mahimahi, and I chose the Traditional Hawaiian meal complete with pretty much everything.
Too full to even consider ordering dessert, we ordered dessert...
a combination of Kuau Chocolate Pie and Hana Banana Macadamia Nut Crisp. We ended up taking most of the dessert home with us.
Hands down best dinner yet... Locale, Service, and amazing Food at Mama's Fish House. The one place everyone always recommends.
Still full from dinner the night before, we are woken up by the sounds of saws and hammers, we skipped the free continental breakfast and headed down to the beach. By know I'm well into book five of the Game of Thrones series, A Dance with Dragons.
After another lunch at the neighboring Gazebo, we came back to our beach and I took my newly purchased camera out for a snorkel.
Thinking about heading back in, I catch another dark shadow out of the corner of my eye, no, not a shark, another giant sea turtle. Literally an arms length away from me, we just looked at each other, and for the next 20 minutes just floated back and forth in the surf side by side while he munched away on whatever it is that sea turtles munch on in the coral.
A very special afternoon, made even more special by the email I received from Go!/Mokulele Airlines. Our flight that was supposed to leave at noon to connect us with our 3:00pm flight home from Honolulu has been rescheduled... to 6pm. Does anyone see the problem with this? I contacted them and basically got the, "well, soooorrrryyy", "we have 1 seat available at 7am". That doesn't work for obvious reasons.
I checked online, and then called Westjet, and lucky for us they had a flight that left directly from Maui, but unfortunately the only 2 seats that were left were on Friday instead of the Saturday we were supposed to leave. Booked, we lose a day, but at least we could tell Go! to gth.
It's New Years Eve, so we watched another colourful sunset and had booked a late dinner at the Sea House Restaurant down the beach, so we didn't have to worry about driving to get home. They had a special menu for New Years, amazing seafood again... I chose Surf n' Turf.
It's a very different New Years Eve, as we look down the bay and watch people setting off fireworks all along the beach. Apparently the Costco fireworks are all the spray of sparks type instead of the sky-burst we are used to. The entire length of the bay was little clusters of people and sprays of sparks. It seemed that everyone wanted to set off their fireworks for midnight wherever they were from, California time (10:00) New Years fireworks were the busiest, and it got a little quiet again until midnight Hawaii time.
The most excitement came watching people impatiently trying to launch their New Years lanterns. They are large paper bags with a flame below, and the New Years wishes are written on them. As the flames fill the bag with hot air, they will float away into the sky. It's like a sporting event with cheers and groans as people try to release them too early and they drop into the sand or the ocean, before one finally floats away to the cheer of the crowd.
Hau'oli Makahiki Hou is Hawaiian for Happy New Year
It's been a long running tradition for Norine to do the Polar Bear Swim on January 1st. Over the last # of years, her and my niece and nephew would bundle up, head down to the freezing shoreline of Port Moody's harbour, quickly disrobe, run into the freezing waters after the countdown, then run back out where I would be waiting with big warm towels and some Hot Chocolate. I finally decided that this would be the year I join in on the Polar Bear swim... I just don't see what all the yelling and screaming was about... the water was fine.
Continuing my after lunch tradition, I swam off our beach and did some snorkeling again. No turtles this time.
After a little pool time, and some cooling down in the shade, we headed back into Lahaina.
A Cirque like show of Hawaiian history was recommended to us, 'Ulalena... here's the description
'Ulalena! A stunning theatrical experience portraying Hawaiian history and legend, this show explores the fascinating relationship between man, nature, and mythology by blending acrobatic feats of strength and beauty.
Maybe it's because we had just seen the Odysseo show before Christmas, maybe it's because we have seen a number of Cirque shows over the years, but this was not a Cultural spectacle of acrobatics. There was 2 acrobatic bits, some great music, costumes and dancing with a Ballet style story presentation of the Hawaiian history. But, the price of the front row centre tickets included dinner at the Lahaina Fish Co., and that was really good. After we were seated, the waiter moved us to a small table overhanging the water, looking out on the bay.
I started with Ahi poke tacos, and finished with Macadamia nut crusted Mahimahi. Is it bothering you that I keep describing this amazing seafood that we ate? I hope you weren't watching my Facebook feed over the holidays then.
This morning my grand plan was to take a tray to the continental breakfast, and bring back a mix of food that we could eat at our patio table. It's 8:30, most of the fruit is gone, there's no cinnamon-raisin toast left, the pineapple juice is drained, and there is no hot water left for Norine's morning tea... it's a debacle!!! So we have some plain toast, and share a muffin, and are forced to boil our own water in the room (First world problems). Then we sit on our patio and watch this pesky Egret try to murder and eat our friend Gord the Gecko.
After our less-than-standard breakfast we head down to the beach for our last beach day. There is way less people, so I guess a lot have already flown home, the water is calm, the sun is hot, and we are relaxing reading our books...
The moment your heart stops when a Tsunami warning goes off and you're sitting on the beach. Everybody cleared out of the water pretty quickly, but most everybody just stood around on the sand wondering what was going on. I am running through a plan... grab Norine, jump in the car, drive to higher ground. Then the horn stopped. We asked one of the hotel employees, and apparently they do this test during the first week of each month. A "this is only a test" advance warning would be a good idea, how about some "in case of a Tsunami warning..." pamphlets. It's pretty scary to think that most of those people would have been caught standing around if it was real. Having recently seen the Naomi Watts - Ewen McGregor film "The Impossible", my heart still races when I think about that horn going off.
The last sunset pictures... I promise!
We plant ourselves at the top of the beach and watch the sun start to set, at the same time we are watching a group of Humpback whales breaching and splashing off the shore. A pretty special way to spend our last sunset in Hawaii.
It was our last night, so using our handy-dandy OpenTable app, we found the most recommended restaurant available, and headed to the Kaanapali Golf Resort for the Hawaiian Fusion restaurant known as Roy's. I am pretty sure it was the noisiest restaurant on the island... It kind of reminded me of an Earl's atmosphere with double the volume. You don't have a sports bar inside of a fine dining restaurant during College football Bowl season. Roy's Seafood Collection dinner of clams, scallops, prawns, and assorted white fish was spectacular, but unfortunately the noise drove us out before dessert. Last picture of food we ate... I promise!
The next morning we packed up and headed to the airport 1 day earlier than we had planned. It's supposed to be a 45 minute drive from our hotel to the airport, it took 40 minutes to get to Kahului, and 1 hour to get through the traffic lights to the airport. It wasn't like this on Molokai, they didn't have traffic lights. We had lunch and hung out at Sammy Hagars Beach Bar and Grill while we waited for our flight. This time the flight was only 30 minutes late, and we left the tropical islands to arrive back in Vancouver... from 30° Celsius to 30° Fahrenheit in 6 hours.
A tropical holiday is a very different way to celebrate Christmas and New Years. We got to experience 2 very different sides of Hawaii this trip, from the laid back small island of Molokai, to the big city fine-dining tourist mecca of Maui.
Whatever island you are on, the water, the sands, the tropical flowers, the tropical fish, and the amazing scenery are never to be forgotten, I know why people keep returning...
but I truly miss Molokai, and look forward to going back to the island that time forgot.
Silva's smiling face and wagging tail when we came in the door, made it easier to be back home.