Monday, January 13, 2025

Maui -- wow!

Today is listed as "Beach Day & Luau" in our itinerary, not a bad way to get started.  After a quick breakfast we walk 50 ft to the beach and walk along until we find the perfect spot. Sand and surf, enough shade as the sun comes up hot, a light breeze, not too much coral on the beach so walking into the surf is easy. Turtles bobbing in the water, whales breaching offshore. Just amazing. 

Searching for the perfect Maui beach location. 

X -- the spot 

Oh let me back up a little. 

That pineapple I bought yesterday? We had it for breakfast. Now we all know the secret, that commercial pineapples lose much of their flavor between Hawaii and our supermarket in NC. This was the best pineapple we've had since.... Since we were in Hawaii in 1992. Yum! 

Prior to the pineapple we had a little medicinal coffee -- it turns out that the headaches over the past two days were due to increasingly late coffee. Here with five hours time change since NC, a 6 AM coffee is like waiting until almost noon at home -- we know that's not gonna happen. So with the fever breaking during the night and administration of medicinal caffeine (for those looking to replicate the experiment: drip brewed, Mr Coffee strong setting, Starbucks espresso roast, 1 oz per English cup) the patient was fully recovered and had a wonderful morning. Phew! 

Now we have to plan ahead on how to convert to Australian time. Current plan is to setback coffee time by 30 minutes per day until we fly, then revert to raw wit & animal cunning on the travel day. We'll update the experimental record in a week or so. 

Here's a question for the naturalists out there. Why do whales slap the water with their tails? We saw a whale doing this for five minutes today. It would stand (tail) half out of the water, slap hard, come back up and repeat. Until it had to breathe, then again for a minute or two. Repeat...  Many seconds later we could hear the loud slapping report across the water. Perhaps to signal other whales? Stun prey for feeding? Mark territory? According to at least one marine biologist it could be any of these or more. 


Another unanswerable question -- why, in this most perfect paradise of all the places we are visiting, do we have a round trip ticket guaranteed to take us away from here? Every other place has a one way ticket and we can pretend we might stay forever. But not Maui? Why, oh why?

In late afternoon we drive over to Lahaina for the Lu'au at the Sheraton. Everyone gets a beautiful lei, we have good seats near center front, the good and drink are good and the show is excellent. A lot of Hawaiian history, culture and of course dance. Kitschy, yes, but well performed. 

Here's us at the Lu'au

Kathy and Pat -- twins??

Oma & Opa get matching sea turtle tattoos. 

Traditionally cooked dish

One of the desserts -- purple is a go-to color here

One of many shots of the performers. I'll have to share the videos elsewhere. 

With ones of the dancers after the show

We exit to a full moon in Gemini. 

Tomorrow, snorkelling at Molokini.

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