Aloha from Maui, Installment 2

Having a wonderful time, wish you were here. Ingi and I just finished our home made dinner and we're sitting in our Lahaina condo, listening to the waves roll in. The sliding door is wide open, the fan above us is circling slowly, every once in a while I can hear the low tones of fellow residents here at Lahania Roads talking. It's all very companionable. Ingi is surfing Icelandic websites as is his wont to do and I'm thinking of the last two days and how time is both flying by and standing still. Is this something that happens particularly on the islands? I'm trying to not wear my watch and I find my sense of time is undergoing some reconstruction (or perhaps deconstruction). Today we took an 11 hour tour and I alternately wished it would be over and then I wished it would never end. But more about today later.

Yesterday was our first day of true non-scheduled relaxation. We drove the yeppi in to the Lahaina Cannery Mall which is right down Front Street from us. We probably could have easily walked it, but we wanted to get groceries at Safeway so we took the vehicle. We toured the Mall a bit before grocery shopping. The islands have been hit hard by the economic downturn, and there were at least 10 empty stores, and not very many shoppers for it being the Christmas season. As many of you know, I've been attempting to pare down on all the "stuff" I have -- it's been a serious attempt in the last couple of years. However, I found myself excited once again by "stuff" primarily because it's Hawaiian style. I thought I was done with wanting any more chotchsky, but all those cheesy Hawaiian trinkets at the ABC store and all those carvings out of kukui nuts and all those plumeria patterned bags and towels and the Hawaiian CD's and the Hawaiian etc, etc, etc, called out my name. "Maaarrrrry, take me home!" I heard as I roamed the isles. To distract myself, I went into a gift store that carries mostly locally made crafts and overheard the sales woman talking to a young couple who said they were on a cruise ship and were in Lahaina just for the day. I joined the conversation and wished them a good experience. They asked where I was from and I replied, "Portland, Oregon". They smiled and said they had flown out of the Portland airport to begin their trip, but they really lived in eastern Washington. "Where in Wahington?" I asked. "A small city that's part of three", they responded, "Pasco". I laughed -- "We're moving to Richland" and we all had a small world moment. Here I am in Lahaina, Maui and I run into people from the Tri-Cities.

Anywho, we made it out of the Lahaina Cannery Mall without forking over a bunch of money and got some great poke at Safeway and came home to eat it and enjoy our view. For those of you who don't know poke (pronounced po-kay), you're missing out. We got tuna and it was delicious. Ingi ate his raw and I heated mine up a bit and it was still melt in your mouth tender. Poke is usually made from any type of fish and seasoned with lots of flavorful spices and marinated in lime juice or soy sauce. There are often a sprinkling of noodles and onions and garlic -- poke is great just by itself or over rice or with veggies. We had our first poke from the Kauai Costco several years ago and this Safeway recipe is as tasty as all get out. I'm sure there is more poke in our future this week. I took my first dip in the pool here yesterday evening and the water felt like velvet. The pool is actually a pretty good size for the small complex that we're at, and it goes up to 6 feet deep, which I quite like. One of my bucket list items is to swim some day with dolphins and I got pretty close last nite because the bottom of our pool is tiled with wonderful whale renditions. They're so realistic and beautifully done that when you're swimming and looking down in the water it's not too much of a stretch to believe that you're truly having a whale encounter. Lovely.

We slept well last nite and woke early to start our day long tour today. We signed up with Valley Isle tours to do the Road to Hana. We got picked up at 7 am by our van of 12 plus one driver and began our adventure around the island. I picked this company because they are one of the few that don't turn around at Hana but keep going clockwise around Maui to make a full circle. We had a great day, albeit long and conducive of sore butt syndrome. Our driver, Pu (yes, pronounced pooh) is a Maui born and raised woman in her early 60's. Long, long thick black hair and a smooth Hawaiian voice. The history lessons she gave us were amazing and very interesting -- I'm sure Ingi will be quoting trivia from her for years. It's really neat to get a tour from a native. We remember this from when we were in Costa Rica. There is just a certain love of the people and the land that comes through when a native is speaking of their homeland. Pu drove that van with ease and panache through all 617 of the Hana "Hi-Way" curves, making us glad we had left the driving to her. Maui is lush and green, green, green and we got eyefulls of waterfalls and plants and flowers. We stopped at a black sand beach, the 7 Sacred Pools of Oheo, and lastly the grave of Charles Lindberg. She pointed out Jim Neighbor's property, Pat Benatar's property, and Oprah's property. We saw fat, happy paniolo cows, nimble goats, tons of birds, a few horses, and lots of squatters and hippies along the unimproved hinterlands past Hana. There is a stretch of road that says "very bumpy" on the Maui maps; Pu says its only 8.5 miles but feels much longer. She's right. We survived and had incredible vantage points at every twisty turn of the ocean and Mt. Haleakala and taro fields and the hills -- elevations from 10.000 feet that were covered with clouds to clear blue sea level. We never would have gotten all the fabulous information we did nor would we have seen what we saw if we had driven it ourselves. We went through a couple of towns we want to explore later on our own (Paia, Kihei) and now we have a much better idea of what to do there and what to look for now that we've gotten a foundation of information. Pu dropped us off around 6 pm and I took a dip in the pool with the whales to wash off the sweat from the day while Ingi cooked up the mahi mahi. All in all, a pretty dang good day. See why I wish you were here too?