Day 6 in Maui – Thursday, March 20, 2008

South Maui exploration day!

I started this morning by heading as far south as I could. La Perouse Bay was my destination, where there was literally no more road.


Everything was ultra rocky and the place was a strange mixture of three very distinct landscapes – lush green mountains as a backdrop, electric blue shores in the foreground and dark red and black lava rock all around.

What a sight! I was at the place in the guidebook called Fishbowl, and there were several snorkelers around. The books says that Fishbowl is where the better snorkeling, though the state wants everyone to go to "Dumps" a little further north up the road. Apparently there is a lot less political baggage tied to that location. I believe it too – I passed by there on the way down and there were clearly guided snorkeling excursions going on in there.

I made sure my laces were tight on my sneakers, and I started walking south through the lava fields. Another alien landscape, and fields of lava rock all around made it a very desolate looking jorney for the first several minutes. You can see the path that the lava took down the hill.

Then a short distance later the landscape opened onto a rocky shore and tree lined path. Not long after, I was under the shade of the great trees as I clambered over the roots that lined the shore.
I saw so many interesting things along my 1.5 hour hike! Tons of little white butterflies; tiny little black crabs scurrying around on the rock, trying to avoid the crashing surf; locals fishing on the outcropping edges; and hundreds of gnarly twisted trees forming a separating wall between the lava rock and the ocean.






I met a friendly Canadian couple (they were from Toronto) as I rested underneath the shade of a particularly large tree near the shore. Just beyond us in the water where 3 paddleboats carrying snorkelers. I think at this point I was at the spot they call "Aquarium".

At that point I decided to start heading back, hoping for a place I could dip my feet into the water but pretty convinced I wasn't going to find one. The edges were riddled with reef and slippery algae encrusted ecosystems! Bt just when I had decided it was a lost cause, I happened upon a perfectly smooth 20 foot stretch of sand, complete with gently lapping waves coming up onto the shore. Woo hoo! Off went my shoes and into the water I went.

Back at the car, I loaded up to find my next destination – Secret Cove. This is just south of Big Beach at Makena, and is supposed to be pretty difficult to find. I had to keep my eyes peeled for a specific telephone pole and a narrow little entrance onto the sand. I found them with very little trouble and grabbing my sandwich and passion orange soda and backpack, headed in…

Secret Cove is VERY cute. It's not exactly totally secluded, but it's pretty close. It's also a favorite place for dog owners – there were 5 dogs here today. I went snorkeling in clear aqua blue water and saw 2 turtles! It was delightful to see them, but I was a little intimidated too! It was, after all, just me and them in the water. But I kept my cool and just floated along with the surf and they did the same.

The surf was getting pretty strong though, and it was really hard to tell where the reef under the water met up with the reef above the water. I had trouble orienting myself, so I decided it was time to get out.


Secret Cove is definitely one of my favorite places already. After relaxing for another 30 minutes or so, listening to the friendly chatter between people on beach towels, it looked like it was going to rain. I packed up and headed to my next destination.

Big Beach is just down the street, and my book says that many consider it "the" beach on Maui – who am I to pass it up?

It sure is an idyllic setting here. Lots of flowery umbrellas, the same ultra-fine soft sand as Secret Cove, and a long sloping crescent of crystal clear aqua blue water lapping at the shoreline. Molokini and Holo'okwae are still perfectly in view from here. There are lots more families here too. I am assuming that on the other side of Earthquake Hill (Pu'u Ola'i) sits Little Beach, so christened by the 60's era hippies who designated it clothing optional.

I'm going to stop at Makena Grill, just across from Secret Cove, for a fish taco. This is literally a cart that sells food on the side of the road, but the book says they're excellent and I don't think a trip to Hawaii would be complete without one! J

MMMM…..Mahi Mahi. That fish taco was MONDO delicious! It was huge and expensive ($8.25!) but it was worth it. The Mahi Mahi was fresh and tender and the pineapple salsa really made the flavors come together. Of all the places to eat on Maui, Makena Grill's chef has been named the best on Maui for the last two years. The owners have turned the roadside spot next to their cart into a makeshift dining area, with lots of colorful chairs of all shapes and sizes, and a picnic table painted in Rastafarian colors. They have a little radio propped against the base of a tree playing reggae music that the guests enjoy listening to.


With lunch behind me, it's time to head to Wailea. I'll stop at points along the way if something catches my eye.

I've stopped at another beach along the way to see what's it's like. I went in through the south entrance, since the main entrance was really crowded. I'm not sure, though if I hit the right spot. There is no sand here, and not much of water access either. The only part that leads to the water is a tiny little opening on the right.


Speaking of the opening…there is in that little inlet of water a green sea turtle! He's not very big, probably about 2 ½ feet long. He's just riding the current in and out…closer and closer to shore. A family is perched on a rock nearby watching him. It's nice here.


Final stop of the day – glamorous Wailea beach! Favorite beach of the stars, it's apparently rated one of the best beaches in America. It's nice here – very big and lots of chairs and umbrellas everywhere; they are, of course, for guests at the Grand Wailea Resort ONLY. There are also surfboards, catamarans and other beach sporting gear lined up against the beach wall waiting to be checked out by the hotel guests. There are sailboats and kayaks milling around in the water, and a huge floating trampoline floats on the surface where many children are running and screaming and bouncing and jumping, falling into the water at random intervals. And…….no wind! :D


Here's the best part about Wailea – NO ROCKS in the water. This is the first beach I've been able to enjoy without having to worry about stubbing my toes or scraping my feet. Halleluiah! I feel like I'm at heaven on earth. A nice guy said he'd watch my bag while I took a dip and it was awesome. Calm and serene, smooth as silk, I floated on the water like it was a cloud. Aaaaah…….peace. I'm glad I'm here.


It seems fitting that after my long trek I finally get to laze on the sand and do absolutely nothing. I slept for a little while, I people-watched, I sunned….and I finally got to start the last Harry Potter book. Three chapters down!

After my day trip to South Maui, Alberto took me to Lahaina Oyster Bar for dancing. His coworker Alonzo went with us. The place was cool, but the music – very disappointing. We ended up at a little patio bar underneath Cool Cat Café at the Wharf and chilled for a while. Alonzo is very nice, a little young but very intelligent and has a good sense of humor.


Tomorrow is our last day here. I have lots of things planned to do with B, who finished work today and will be able to spend the day with me. What a nice way to wrap up the vacation!

Day 5 in Maui - Wednesday, March 19, 2008

This morning I decided to do some swimming/snorkeling in Honolua bay, and then meet Alberto for lunch. My plans were thwarted though by my own confusion and not reading my guidebook very well. After dropping Alberto off at work I headed to the spot that the book states was Honolua Bay. However, I was sure I'd got it wrong. My trek took me through an area clearly marked private property, through what seemed more likely to be the backwoods of Louisiana than the coast of Maui. In the clearing lay a very small area filled with rock and very gritty black sand. There was no beach to be seen. A couple of people were clumsily trying to wade into the water with their snorkeling gear, and a few elderly women sat perched on large rocks looking a little miserable. How could this be the legendary Honolua Bay so many have spoken of? A quick call to Alberto confirmed that maybe I was in the wrong spot. So, I packed up my gear and went in search of what my true destination was.

I never found it, but I did end up at the nice area of Slaughterhouse Beach just up the road. This beach was very sandy and cute. There is a little cave off to the left of the beach that I'd like to explore with Alberto. However---it's way too windy to swim. I tanned for a few minutes, watching the sand quickly fill up with other folks and decided to keep moving.

Next stop – DT Fleming Beach, which is a very well-established and large beach. I decided, though, to not stop here. My book says it's a favorite beach for locals, and I am a little intimidated by them. Alberto's admonition keeps ringing in my head – "No Hawaiian, No Aloha". He told me stories about how ugly locals can be to tourists, including burnt out cards along the Road to Hana. I don't mind exploring more with B, but not while I'm alone.

So, I turned around and kept right on driving down the road. I decided, since my morning was dwindling and I had to meet B for lunch, that I'd head back to Oneloa beach in Kapalua. Surely, with it being much earlier in the day, the wind would be considerably less. I was looking forward to an opportunity for a quiet sunning session on a quiet beach. Plus, I was dying to get back in the water after yesterday's 'zen' moment. This also gave me the chance to just pop over and grab B when it was time for lunch since it was right down the road.

The beach was still windy. L Not as bad as yesterday, but a bit uncomfortable. I was determined though to stake a claim and get in the water so I laid my stuff out and headed in. All I wanted was to swim out into the aqua blue water….but when I got to the water's edge I noticed something I had not seen before – rocks! Lots of them! I was so disappointed. There was still water and sand but there were so many rocks – large and wide ones – that I knew I'd stub my toes or scrape my legs if I tried to wade out into the surf with them just below. FOILED. So I sat at the water's edge and let the water lap at my toes.

Lunchtime arrived and I went to pick Alberto up. We went to a little store/market/lunch counter called Honolua Market with one of his co-workers Alonzo. Alonzo was picking lunch up for the rest of the grup. We sat at a small picnic table outside and I got to hear stories for the next 45 minutes of things the guys had done during their stay on the island. After dropping the guys back at the house, it was time for my afternoon adventure!

I decided that since I probably wasn't going to the Iao Valley (just not enough time), I should do as much of the drive around the top of the island as I could today. What a great idea that turned out to be! The highway along the coast is filled with the most breathtaking scenery! There were lots of hairpin turns, just like at Haleakala and some of them had signs advising you to blow your horn so cars coming from the opposite direction would know you are there. In some area the road is, to me, a little too close to the edge. It was beautiful – boundless green above and all around and endless azure down below. I couldn't help but film the landscape as I drove.

I had the unlucky misfortune, though, to be doing this as I passed a little Hawaiian village in one of the valley. Littered also with burnt out wreckage at the entrance to the little village, a man playing a ukulele while sitting on a sofa on the side of the highway decided to give a nice Hawaiian 'fuck you' and flipped me off. That's just ignorant.

My guidebook made mention of an interesting sight on the coast that involved a little bit of a hike, so I was curious for the adventure. At mile 38 I parked my car and started the journey to the Nakalele blowhole.

What an interesting trip that was. You start off by descending a steep rocky path alongside an old lighthouse overlooking the ocean. Once at the bottom, you have to hide east for about 15 minutes. On this hike, you walk through terrain that you'd swear must have come from another planet. The constant crash of the water and the sea salt that flies everywhere has slowly turned the landscape into a beautiful mess of rocks with holes eaten through them and incredibly sharp edges. Some of the rocks look like giant loofah sponges. Others seem to be teetering on nothing as the bases have eroded into nothing. There are massive brick red striations that course across the rock walls and the ground is actually spongy beneath your feet!

About ½ way there I encountered a shelf below that is almost constant being battered by the surf. There was a blowhole in the corner of the shelf which made a lot of noise buy only small eruptions of water. This was the little blowhole but not the Nakalele blowhole of my destination. So I kept walking and two alien landscapes later, I found it.

Down below, another shelf about 3 times as big as the one I'd just seen lay there battered by the elements. The wind was high and surf was so violent that it sometimes crashed higher than the rock walls of the shoreline, leaving me and the other hikers that had found this spot spattered with sea water.

Just to the left of the middle of the shelf lay a gaping hole, about 3 feet in diameter. It reminded me of the jaws of sarlacc though not as wide (any Star Wars fans recognize the reference?). As the waves would crash against the wall, the ole would alternately spit some water out or such the water deeper down into the hole. This seemed like the biggest vacuum cleaner I'd ever seen! Then with no warning at all, the hole let out a gigantic plume of water, at least 20 feet high! The wind carried the water inland and soaked us all on the right side of the blowhole. It was fantastic! I couldn't take my eyes off it, mesmerized by the way the water was so violently being sucked in, just to erupt more violently afterward.

My book said that you can never tell when a blowhole is going to erupt. The most monstrous waves could produce nothing, while the smallest waves could trigger a massive spume of water. It was great! I walked around to the front and just inland from the blowhole, sure I'd stay dry here, and set my videocamera on the scene. Sure enough, when I was least expecting it, a huge blast of water erupted and came right at me, soaking both me and the video camera. It was time to go!

After I got to the car I went to go find one more spot that the book described called the Olivine pools. It was supposed to be a calm pool of water amidst the ocean and seemed like a perfect place to relax after my hike. I pulled over at a couple of different spots, including a dirt road where I quickly discovered my little Chevy Cobalt was tough enough to go offroading! However, despite searching for it I was unable to locate the right spot before it was time to meet Alberto after work. Since he is sure he'll be done with work tomorrow, we'll be able to spend Friday together before going home. I'll postpone the search for the Olivine Pools till then; maybe we'll find them together.

Back at the condo that night, we watched the sun sink behind the horizon from the comfort of our lanai:

Day 4 in Maui – Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Black Rock – at Ka'anapali Beach – B says this is his favorite beach. I've set myself up at the foot of the black lava rock, at the furthest north point of the sand. There are lots of families here, and kids are running all over the place with little mini masks and snorkels. The sand here is a salt & pepper looking mixture of white, black and orange. The black lava rock is really impressive up close; as it juts out into the water it is narrow and craggy and shows the wear of constant tidal splashes – the bottom is jet black, with a ribbon of rusty brown above it, slowly fading into darker black-red that characterizes the rest of the formation. There are torches mounted at regular intervals along the top of the rock, and they look from here like primitive spears used by wild people. My guide book says that this jetty called Pu'u Keka'a, was the place on Maui where recently deceased peoples' souls jumped off from their earthbound coil to eternal life with their ancestors. If there was no one there to greet them, the spirits would wander around the rocks and cause mischief for the living.
...
Just got back from snorkeling. The water was just like it was at Molokini – cold to the touch upon entry, but as soon as your body is submersed it's sublime. Swimming in the waters of Maui is an awesome experience. The water temperature is so perfectly alighed with your own sense of self-temperature that the ocean feels like just an extension of yourself. You swim in the water feeling as if the water is a part of you. The waters of the Pacific in California are too cold, and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico (though quite comfortable for me) are still warmer than my own 'self-temperature'. Here in Maui, there is no sense of boundary between my skin and the water. It's quite a feeling.

The craggy rock of the jetty extends outward much more under the water than above. I thought it was an optical illusion at first! There were two main kinds of fish here – medium sized fish with white, yellow and black stripes (I think these were butterfly fish) and larger fish that were kind of a pearlescent blue. The blue fish stayed much closer to the bottom of the ocean, which dropped off very quickly from the shore, but the yellow and black fish preferred to stay close to the snorkelers. Maybe they were looking for food, but I got the sense that they liked to ride in the gentle wake of the snorkelers' fin kicks.

I swam all the way out past the jetty, where the book said I was much more likely to see more fish and maybe some turtles, but I saw very few things swimming about. Maybe next time I go out I'll round the corner of the rock and head a bit north.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the panoramic view from the sand includes a bird's eye view of Molokai off the coast? It's beautiful! I'd describe how the clouds are hovered over the isle, but a large family just decided to setup camp *right in front* of me. Drat. Guess it's time to move on….

I spent the afternoon on a mission to see the rest of the West Maui Beaches (well, the good ones) that were featured in my guide book. During the journey I found:

A memorial site at the northernmost end of Lower Honoapiilani Road – it dead-ends into a Kapalua community and just to the right of a golf course was the site. Here's what my guide book says about the site:

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel was supposed to be an oceanfront hotel. The lawn
was to be its location. The only things standing in their way were approximately
2,000 ancient Hawaiians buried in the area. The developers began digging up the
graves and, when the Hawaiian community learned of it, they began a series of
emotional protests. Nearly 900 remains were dug up before common sense
prevailed, and the hotel decided to relocate the buildings and reinter the bones
in 1990. A state law was enacted after this to prevent such a thing from ever
happening again.

Imagine, stirring up 900 ancient Hawaiian spirits and incurring their wrath! If there's one thing I've learned about Hawaiian culture, it's that they don't mess around! It is still a very savage culture underneath the surface. I wonder if there are any stories of hauntings or mischief that occurred on or around the site as a result…

Upon turning around, I found Oneloa Beach. It was deserted, just like the book promised, with about 10 other people scattered on the sand, but windy as hell! They say that the best time to go to the beach on West Maui is between 8:00 and noon. After that the afternoon trade winds start kicking up, making it uncomfortable to relax on the sand. Well, it was only 10:30 am, and the wind had already arrived! The wind was so strong the sand was blasting my legs. Some surfers were up in the water trying to make the most of the swells, which looked to be about 5 feet, but they were pretty difficult to wrangle. Here, the sands were a beautiful creamy white color.

Next stop on the guide book – Kapalua Bay. I found the access points as described but it was incredibly crowded. Apparently, I'm not the only one who heard it was a "gem". Parked cars snaking alongside the road told me I'd better accept defeat and move on.

And so it was that I got to Napili Beach. This looks like a little cove, and the shoreline is very steep. To the left is a really large lava rock reef poking out into the water, but I didn't have the right kind of shoes to explore. Instead, I decided to stake a claim on the sand and watch the families body surfing.

Tuesday Night, The Feast at Lele Luau

Tonight we went to the luau that Alberto had reserved for us, called the Feast at Lele. We got a beautiful lei around our necks and a potent mai tai placed in our hands upon entry. What a nice welcome!In purposely booking a luau that didn't have a buffet line, I overlooked the most obvious drawback to this – they have total control over how much food the guests get. The food was delicious but Alberto and I felt that, for a "feast", the servings were a bit skimpy. That said, they made very interesting use of things like sweet potatoes, taro root/taro leaf and coconut milk. We had four courses, each from a different area – Hawaii, New Zealand, Tahiti and Samoa. I did NOT like the Samoan dishes, which surprised me because I generally like everything!

Speaking of not liking something, I decided officially that I don't like Mai Tais. It must be the dark rum. Instead, I had a Blue Hawaiian which counteracted the rum flavor more effectively.

The dancers were beautiful, and there were lots of different types of dances done. Boy, can those girls shake! They have elasticity in their hips that I never would have thought possible if I hadn't seen it for myself. Anyone care to take some luau dancing lessons?

We also got a sneak peek at some of the competitors in this summer's 'best Polynesian dancer' competition. The dancers were all clearly proud of their routines and have been practicing had to win.

But the best part about the feast was the view onto the horizon. We got great seats first row on the second level, so our view of the dancers and the sunset behind was completely unobstructed. The use of the beach line below was beautiful with bright orange colors and, later, firesticks being thrown below. Yellows, oranges, pinks and purples streaked the sky, and two cruise ships anchored at sea made for an interesting landscape. As the sun continued to go down they each turned on their twinkly lights from front to back. It was very picturesque. I liked doing luau, but I think it's definitely a one-time only thing for me. One of those must-do's as a tourist, but I am happy to go back to the more down-home personal exploration of culture and food around the island.