Robot Journal : Hello Hawaii - Part III (or "Maui, you so pretty")

1/19/2007

Hello Maui

Bordello

We stayed at the Plantation Inn in the town of Lahaina (west side of Maui).
Just read my review on TripAdvisor - the room (#10) is painted dark (dark!) red and they use 40-watt bulbs. You can barely read even in bed.

I know how to do low-light. I can low-light the sh1t out of a room. I can do romantic lighting.
The Plantation Inn can't.
They can do some great lighting that reminds me of a sick, old woman's house.

Otherwise it's a nice hotel. Except for that one room.

Lahaina! Aiiiiyeeee! My eyes!
Do you like crowds from cruise ships? Do you like stores selling cheap wares?
Go now to Lahaina!!
Lahaina is apparently a popular cruise ship destination. Good for them.

Maybe I don't hang out with cruise ship people and maybe this is a common thing for these "ports" - Lahaina has some of the most bizarre, atrociously cheesy art galleries.
Really.

Check these out...
- Beyond the nine lives
- Galaxy of Life
- Enternal Embrace

Swim bastard!
We went swimming. The water was nice and the waves weren't crazy. We did very little.
Did I mention Fish Tacos?
Holy moly we had some good ones.

Makena Grill which is past Big Beach. A little taco stand. We were sandy.
The woman manning the grill was playing reggae music.
Oh, fish taco. I love thee.

Oh, that ol' mountain
After hanging out on the west side of Maui for a few days, we hopped into our rental convertible (wooo!) and went up to the "high country".
Or the "up country".
Or the "way high up there country"

The next morning we went hiking into/onto Haleakala National Park, which is home to the big dormant volcano in Maui.
We did the "Sliding Sands" trail into the valley/volcano.

It's pretty high up there (10K feet) and the ascent from sea level up to the parking lot area is pretty quick - so it can easily play havoc with popping ears, your body in general, and (most importantly) bags of potato chips.
(We had bought Eric(w) a bag of "Maui" chips as a souvenir and when we neared the top, we realized that the pressure was making our little bag chips expand - to the point where it just popped. Chips!)

Once again, it was if we had woken up on another planet... maybe Mars. The landscape is so shockingly beautiful and barren.
You want to hit your head on a rock.

Speaking of rocks, this whole area is covered in little rocks. Or would it be gravel? The little rocks are volcanic and weigh very little and have very pointy corners - pointy in a way that you wouldn't want to go sliding down the slopes.

It was a fun hike, but an exhausting walk back up. If you ever go there, I'd recommend the horse tour which looked like a lot of fun and allows you to go ALL the way down to the crater floor without having to use your own legs to walk back up (sorry horses).

We were dusty and stinky when we finished.

Hi Sushi!

In the little town near where we were staying was a deli/sushi place called Makawao Sushi & Deli - it's a deli that happens to have a sushi bar, and this being Maui, the sushi was spectacular. It's BYOB, and we picked up a bottle of wine at the general store next door and then gorged our hike-tired body on sashimi and rolls.
Perfect.

What else about Maui?

Oh. The next day we did a little driving on the Hana highway, which is Maui's uber-scenic highway. It was pretty - lots of lush greenery and waterfalls (literally) at every turn.
We had great fish tacos again and looked at the beach for extended periods of time as dramatic grey clouds chruned off in the distance.
Did I mention we went whale watching?
We saw some whales off in the distance. Scott, who had been there a few weeks before us, has the best whale-watching photo (be sure to view the large version).

The End
We returned to Honolulu and stayed with our pal Jacob and did the following:
- Drove around the north shore
- had dinner with Eve
- had a sweet beach front breakfast buffet in Waikiki
- ate shave ice

Then we had to go home.
*sigh*

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