Puddle Jumpers

On Monday, Neil and Mel had a good part of the day off! Yipee!! Ingrid danced around the hotel room in a spazzmotic ritual happy dance. We all threw on our bathing suits, grabbed the keys to Phil’s rental car, and off we went! Ingrid was designated the official tour guide, as she had gone to Lahaina the day before with Taylor.

So, Lahaina for breakfast was our destination. We looked for the car, and what did we find? Phil had rented a Ford Mustang convertible! Yeeee-Hawww baby! We’re off!

Neil was the mid-life crisis Stud-muffin, à la Don Johnson, while Ingrid and Mel were his side-kick Babe-o-licious Babes. Ya! Mamma!

Mustang Mel:

Stud-muffin Neil cruisin’ down the highway:

On the road to Lahaina, we stopped and mugged for the camera. Neil did his Burt Reynolds impersonation, avec clothes…

And Ingrid vamped it up:

We got serious for a minute though:

There were flowers to take pictures of,

the view,

and then we were off!

Coming into Lahaina, we spotted some locals among the tourists…

And took a few minutes while waiting for breakfast to look at pictures on our digital cameras,

and generally just relaxed…

After breakfast we headed over to the giant Banyan tree. It’s so interesting with its rambling branches, roots and trunks. We wandered around taking pictures.

Have you hugged a tree today?

Ingrid hiding…

Mel dwarfed by the banyan tree…

Someone wrote on the tree “Bubbles 4 Kisses”… a perfect place for kisses, then.

Oops, we noticed this after the fact.

Beside the court house, there’s remnants of a fort that had been build out of coral blocks. The fort once covered an acre and had 20 ft. high walls. It was built between 1831 to 1832 out of coral that was taken from the ocean where the Lahaina Harbour sits today. Cannons were placed along the waterfront as a show of strength. According to Frommer’s, Rev. William Richards convinced the Governor of Maui at the time, Governor Hoapili, to create a law which forbade the women of Lahaina from swimming out to greet the whaling ships. Consequently, some whalers fired a few cannonballs onto Lahaina in protest. The fort was then constructed, and was later used as a prison until it was torn down in the 1850’s where the stones were used for construction of the new prison.

Imagine, buildings built out of coral! Wow!

A close-up of a coral block:

There were plumeria flowers to take pictures of. They have such a lovely scent, come in many colours and grow everywhere…

There were hibiscus to take pictures of…

Dark hibiscus,

and light ones.

On our wanderings through the town, we spotted another local through the sea of tourists. He was a god fearing local who was playing his guitar and preaching from his Bible about the evils of the world and the U.S. and the saintliness of Ronald Regan. Whoa…

Then it was time to head off to buy fresh pineapple. Ingrid got to drive this time! Get ready baby…

… here we go!

The last time Mel was in Hawaii, she took surfing lessons, and absolutely loved it! We saw some people surfing, so we stopped and took some pictures. Looks like fun!

We stopped at a stand where they sold fresh, organic pineapples, coconuts, papaya, bananas and avocados.

Neil and Mel figuring out they’re under a coconuts sign. What a couple of nuts!

We bought a fresh coconut that the guy hacked away at the top until he broke through the hard shell and the juice came pouring out. It took less than a minute.

Then he got three straws and we drank the juice right out of the nut. It was delicious!

He then chopped the coconut in half and we ate the soft meat inside. This coconut was especially good because it was green and still very soft. Fresh coconuts aren’t as sweet as you think they’d be, but they’re really yummy.

Then, Neil went bananas…

So did Mel, only over the flowers…

This is the inside of the banana flower. It looks like a tongue. Weird.

…and then we bought some fresh pineapple, papaya and a huge avocado before we headed off to find a beach to go swimming and snorkeling.

We found a great beach that was protected from the wind and was right by the road. Perfect!

Or maybe not…

Well, what the hell, you only live once. We cautiously waded into the clear, warm water. It felt like bath water it was so warm. The sand gradually gave way to rocks, with large black lava pebbles worn smooth and round from tidal action. The water was teaming with life, with large mounds of coral, so we put on the snorkel and mask we had bought earlier, while Mel put on her swim goggles. We saw a lot of beautiful fish and a sea cucumber. It was amazing! There were huge beds of coral providing an oasis for incredibly coloured fish. We paddled around, always on the alert for sharks. Ingrid couldn’t get “Jaws” out of her head. Snorkeling was fun, but between being a bit nervous of the shark factor, bleeding from cutting our feet on coral and having to get back to work, we reluctantly went back to the beach promising ourselves we’d go snorkeling again tomorrow.

Neil looking out to sea, thinking about snorkeling and all the cool fish…

So Babe-o-licious babe, Mustang Mel, piloted a gagillion horsepowers of raw force, all the way back down the highway that has a maximum speed limit of 50 mph, to Wailea.

Ingrid pretended she was a dog with its head out the window; Neil caught it on camera…

And so, our intrepid technicians showered, shaved, shampooed and shined and headed off to work.

Another day in paradise.

Out and about

Taylor, Neil and I met for lunch before Neil headed off to work on Sunday, and before Taylor left the island to go back home to work. Then Taylor invited me to go for a quick site-seeing tour up to Lahaina, which is an old whaling village. There’s a huge banyan tree there too.

Lahaina is about 45 min. from Wailea, where we’re staying. It’s touristy, but also quite nice.

There’s a huge banyan tree that was planted by missionaries in 1873 to mark the 50th anniversary of missionary work in Lahaina. It was imported from India. According to Hawaiiweb.com, it’s one of the largest Indian banyan trees in the world. It grows very close to, and almost into the old court house. There’s an outdoor market that takes place under it from time to time.

The branches have long tendrils that dangle from them, which eventually become roots and trunks. The whole tree, which looks like many trees, is all connected. Branches, roots, trunks, branches, trunks…. It’s very interesting.

After wandering around for a little while, Taylor and I got a yummy iced coffee from “Bad Ass” coffee company. Then we wandered over to the Pacific Whale Foundation where Taylor bought a surfing shirt as a souvenir for himself. It was a good purchase, because 100% of the proceeds from the profits of sales goes directly back to the foundation.

Then Taylor took me back to Wailea, we said our goodbyes, extended warm invitations to our respective parts of North America, and off he went.

I hung out that evening in the gardens of the resort and took a few pictures. It was a lovely evening, warm and soft. The carp lazily swam around near the little waterfall…

Jasmine flowers scented the air…

Lillies bloomed near the ocean…

Palm trees swayed in the setting sun…

And the setting sun bathed Paradise in a golden light…

Another day draws to a close.

On Saturday, I went back down to Big Beach and Little Beach. I took a shuttle from our resort, and as I waited I retook the photo of the statue I think of as “the noble savage” that’s in front of the hotel. I’ll reserve further comment…

The shuttle picked me up, and as we were driving I noticed the driver had passed my stop, and when I mentioned this, he just shrugged and said he was taking me right down to the entrance of the beach in the park! Wow, nice!

I had better luck today than the previous day – it was gloriously sunny – no rain or rain clouds to be seen.

You climb a short but fairly steep path up and across a little volcanic isthmus. Little Beach was separated from Big Beach by a lava flow and earthquake in 1790. The hill dividing the two beaches is called Pu’u Ola’i, or Earthquake Hill. It looks like this:

Here’s the path you walk up and over to get to the other side:

Here’s a view of Big Beach on the way over to Little Beach from the bluff:

There were lots of surfers out today, and on Little Beach, it was no exception. (Warning: if you’re offended by nudity, quickly skip over the next picture, as the guy surfing is naked and if you take a magnifying glass to your computer screen, you just might be able to see his seriously pixilated…gasp… private parts! And yes…gasp again!…Little Beach is a clothing optional beach. ‘Nuff said…)

On the beach, I met a whole bunch of interesting people, and as I was leaving, a regular to the beach gave me a beautiful and wonderfully aromatic stem of tuberoses. He cultivates them and brings them down to the beach and gives them away.

He invited me to come back on Sunday when the regulars do a sunset drumming session. And so, with sweet fragrance and kind words, I went my merry way, intending to come back before we leave the island.

There’s a small section of the beach that has big chunks of coral that have washed up over the volcanic rock. It’s very close to where the surfers played.

On the way back over to Big Beach, I stopped and took some pictures of some of the plants. There’s a tree that grows on the island that is called “Kiawe” in Hawaiian (pronounced “kee-ava”. It’s mesquite, and it has very large, sharp thorns:

According to a few locals I’ve spoken to, there are different stories of how this plant come to the island. One story is that missionaries brought it over and planted them in order to make the natives wear shoes, because when the branches fall off, the thorns are so painful if they’re stepped on, you need to where thick soled shoes to walk about. Another is that ranchers brought the tree over from Texas because it produces large seed pods which were used for cattle feed. The growing conditions are so favourable for the Kiawe, that the tree has chocked out many indigenous plants.

I saw a couple of huge aloe vera plants (I think that’s what they were):

Then I turned towards the sea, and tried to take pictures of the surf splashing on the rocks, and the foam and the sand making marble-like patterns in the water below. When I got back to the hotel and loaded the pictures onto my computer, I noticed something interesting in a couple of them. I looked closely, and I was sure I saw a dorsal fin. So, I zoomed in, and sure enough, there was the unmistakable dorsal fin of a dolphin! I never noticed it as I was shooting, but what a happy accident to capture a picture of a dolphin playing in the surf, not far from the surf-boarders!

On the way out of the park I noticed a papaya tree growing, heavy with fruit, in a forest of Kiawe trees:

Walking back down the road, I passed a forest of cacti which I think are called prickly pears, which had “leaves” much bigger than my hand.

A few locals have told me how the cactus came to Maui. It may have been brought over by the ranchers as a food source for the cattle. Apparently the spines were somehow burned off the plant, and then the cattle could eat the leaf, which was also a source of water for them. The plant may also have been used as a barrier around claimed property.

As I walked, I stopped for some coconut water and meat, and a bag of pineapple slices at a road-side snack shack:

The coconut water and meat was good, but I didn’t find it great. The pineapple? Not as sweet as so many people tell me it was supposed to be. Maybe the next time will be better.

As I walked along towards the pick-up point for the shuttle, the landscape began to change, and paradise’s golf courses cropped up to my right and manicured lawns to my left, and smooth asphalt ahead.

Egrets hang out here and there, and I quickly took a photo of one before it flew away. They’re beautiful birds.

When I arrived at the shuttle’s pick up point at the Prince Hotel, the bellmen all asked if I was the girl who went down to Big Beach the day before. When I said yes, they all said they wondered what had happened to me to the day before. Then the driver who shuttled me back to the Grand Wailea also asked if I was the girl who had gone to Big Beach the day before in the rain, and when I said yes, he said that the bellmen were worried when they hadn’t heard from me that night to take me back to my hotel! Wow! The locals are a wonderful people who seem to really care about the welfare of others. Very, very lovely.

And so, another day in paradise came to a close.

Stay tuned for more!