Back from Paradise – Part 1

and back to the real world.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a couple of weeks ago, a group of friends and I boarded planes and headed to the warm, beautiful and sunny island of Maui. Over the course of 10 days (and 9 nights) we proceeded to have hands down the best vacation ever.

Day 1:

After a day of travelling, we landed in Kahului, Maui on Monday night. We picked up our rental SUV (a Chevy Traverse) and headed to what would be our home for the following days – Makena Beach & Golf Resort. Makena Beach & Golf Resort is a four-star resort, but we got our rooms at a great price using Hotwire (yay!) so this was a real treat for us.

Day 2:

Did you know that Maui is actually 5 hours behind DC time? This pretty much meant that we spent most of Day 2 getting our internal clocks synchronized with local time. That didn’t stop us from exploring the wonderful Makena Beach, spending some great time in prayer, and in general resting up for the upcoming week.

A couple of us picked up some drinks from the pool-side bar and talked to the bartender, Lucky, who gave us a few tips on activities to do while on the island.

Day 3:

Day 3 is when the real fun began. It started off with the discovery of my favorite Maui restaurant (or fast food joint) – L & L Drive Inn, the finding of a pearl, and a new pair of earrings. Most of that afternoon was spent with Irene, the Pleasant Holidays Activities coordinator who helped us book activities for the rest of our trip. The fun started with…

a luau! We got premium seats in the second row (table 11) at the Grand Wailea luau, where dancers hula’d the story of the discovery of Maui. We were also in for a real treat with a performance by an award-winning fire knife dancer who ate fire and tossed fire-lit batons around like hot potatoes.

Day 4:

An early morning. Waking up early wasn’t too bad, since 4:30AM Hawaii time is actually 9:30AM DC time. We drove to a local Park & Ride where we were picked up by Wayne from Hike Maui. Wayne drove us to a private spot off the road to Hana where we hiked in about three miles to a series of waterfalls and swimming pools. Along the way Wayne gave us botany lessons with detailed explanations of the local flora and their uses. A few people were brave enough to jump off the 10 and 25 foot cliffs of the waterfalls into the pools below. I was not one of them. However I did take a few pictures. (To Wayne’s wife – Wayne absolutely, positively, did NOT jump off the waterfalls…more than once…or twice.)

This concludes the summary of the first part of our trip. Stay tuned for more fun activities to come!