Still need to finish Day 1...(con't): We're sitting at the airport and a storm blows over. It is the rainy season... We finally board the plane to Maui. We're sitting next to each other - about mid-way in the plane - when the stewardess announces that she needs two people to sit in the back of the plane for take off. I'm assuming it has to do with balancing weight loads and stuff...I bet Elder Uchtdorf would know... No one is moving and the social awkwardness begins to build. So I look at Oriah and bolt for the back. She kindly plays my reindeer games and people clapped for us as we headed towards the back of the plane.
A whopping 26-minute flight later we land in Maui. Jump in an Enterprise shuttle and get our car. Drive to the hotel and when we get to the room the bathroom light won't turn on and I realize that we have two-double beds and not the king bed I thought I remember reserving. I called down to the front desk and ask if they have my reservation to include a king-size bed and the lady responded with, "you can reserve it but it's based on availability. If it's not available...yada, yada, yada." I'm ticked. I ask her to see if there's a room with a king bed open. Fortunately, there is. Glad I asked. We move into the new - and smaller - room but it has a bathroom light that works and a big, big bed :)
It's about 8p by now and I'm hungry. I'm sure Oriah was also. We thought for a second about what to grab and settled for the restaurant that was attached to the hotel. Convenient solution. Not the best one. The food was adequate, inattentive waiting staff, over priced and I got ripped off with shreds of cabbage in a coleslaw-like sauce substituted for the mac salad that was advertised in the menu. I called the waitress out on not telling me that they were out of mac salad and I wanted a discount. I guess she didn't feel like playing my reindeer games. No discount. My word of mouth: Do not eat at the Coconut Grill if you're staying at the Maui Seaside Hotel in Kahului.
Day 2: With the jet lag we figured we'd get up at 3am (which would be 6a in Utah...normal-ish wake up time) to catch the sunrise atop Haleakalā volcano. It was cold. Not as cold as Utah but it was not warm up there. I thought I learned the lesson the last time I made this trip that the sunrise doesn't come as early as you think being on top of the world in that part of the ocean...yeah, about 5:45a is when you need to be up there to catch the fireworks. We left way too early...my bust. I remember just being in awe of the experience as the sun cast the shadow of the volcano across the sky and landscape below. The show wasn't quite as awesome the 2nd time around but I was glad to bring Oriah up there.
Got back to the hotel and took a nap. Decided to drive to Hana the back way to hike the Pipiwai trail to see the 400-foot waterfall at the end. The bamboo forest was a first for me when I hiked this trail my last visit to Maui. After getting back to the parking lot we headed to the beach and snapped some shots of the black sand. Nice contrast to my white whiteness. With those fun things under our belt it was time to head home so we decided to take the real road to Hana. It was getting close to night time. We saw some of the drive with what day light remained but most of the slow, winding drive was done in the pitch black and it was lame. Took over 2 hours to get back to town. I forgot how miserable "the Road to Hana" really is. Even worse when there's no scenery. Made it back to town. Stopped at Panda Express for dinner and made a stop at Wal-Mart. Tomorrow = LAHAINA and the HYATT!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment