Sailing out to Sea to See the Whales Play

So it is Monday morning in Maui and a plan to visit the village of Lahaina and the famous banyan tree turned into a sailing voyage to site the great killer whales that spend the winter months in the Hawaiian Islands before returning to their summer feeding grounds in Alaska.  Our captain and first mate were a couple of young ladies who handled the boat with skill and found us plenty of action in the waters off Lahaina. Who wouldn't want to spend the winter months in the waters off Hawaii?

Betsey got an amazing tail shot that I hope makes it into this blog.  The 2 hours speed by faster than the whales who must have been scary to the two kayakers that were probably within 25 feet of a whale breech. 

It was a beautiful day to be on the water.  Living here would be amazing as proved by our new friends who will be having dinner with us on Wednesday.

More Maui

Maui has more mojo than the Big Island.

Beach park just across the street from our Maui Condo at sunset our first night in Maui. We didn't travel too far from the condo spending our day at the pool waiting for our room to be ready.

On Sunday we met Betsey and Ron's friends Bob and Deb Lombard. The greeted us with Leis and gift bags filled the flavors of Hawaii from cookies, Macedonia nuts, pineapple juice, Maui Chips, candy and more.

Bob and Deb were wonderful tour guides and helped us see the highlights of Maui. 

McGregor Pt watching for whales and turtles.

The Maui Tropical Plantation  at Walkapu was a perfect place for endless photo ops.

Next up was the Iao Valley where many wars were fought and the needle served as lookout for the various warring factions.

We drove on to Piai for lunch at the Fish Market and a stroll around the hippie like town where we found Charlie's a bar and grill frequently by Willie Nelson and his buddies. 

From Piai we drove further up the coast toward Hana to watch the waves and ocean splash.  After a totally fine afternoon we headed to Deb and Bob's dream house just 5 minutes from the condo

Get set go? To Maui? Or No ID, No Go to Maui

Last day on Hawaii filled with doubt and worry. But we must get some site seeing in before we leave.

So after that ride it was time to get ready for the departure from Hawaii and the MAUI phase of our trip.  The nagging questions were would Al and I get seats on the plane? Would TSA let Betsey on board without ID?  First call Hawaiian Airlines to check the loads.  What? They cancelled the 10:30 flight we were booked on. ( oh by the way when were they going to let us know?). Okay change the flights to 8am and leave the funky volcanoe house at 5:30am.  Works great we got on, Betsey got on. Up and away!

The view from the plane leaving Hawaii

The view of Maui before landing.

View from the pool.

Just Another Day in Paradise? Started that way but....

After sleeping in and breakfast at home we started by having 4 nuts visit the NUT factory. I'm not nuts there were 4 of us, just 2 in this picture ( the other 2 were taking the picture). But the nut factory was taking a vacation too so we had to settle for the nut samples, shopping and the self tour.  They did have some pretty nice gardens too.

Next we went in search of the lighthouse at Cape Kumukahi. We found a tower at the end of a long dirt road. So poor an example of a lighthouse we didn't even take a picture of it.  Maybe we should have taken a picture of the parking lot because after taking these great pictures of the lava and surf...

We returned to this...and Al tossed the two lava rocks with olivine nuggets thinking they brought us bad luck. Really it was the lava boulder that was tossed through the window that was the bad karma!

Broken window and missing valuables !! Oh what a pit in our stomachs!  The rest of the day and into the night was spent waiting for the police, blaming ourselves, getting sympathy and trying to figure out what to do next.  Outcome not yet determined, but we have filed reports, changed rental vehicles again (not sure if I told the story of the car in Honolulu that had the oil light go on, got a 2nd and 3rd car there) and spent hours on the phone trying to get information on replacing passports for Ron and Betsey. My passports were back at the Volcano house and they didn't find my wallet. Boy it was BAD but could have been worse.  Story to be continued. We are working on getting out of the pickle we got ourselves into and salvage the Big Island experience.