We had whale watching scheduled at 2:30. The weather was perfect. Nice and breezy, so we stayed cool, and it was relatively cloudy, so we weren't roasting in the sun. We didn't have to go far to see whales. We watched a calf breaching. The mother dove (showing her fluke) and then breached. It was great! We saw another mother and calf later. The mother was holding the calf up on her nose, pushing it around. The guys on the speaker said they had a whale do that once, swimming right by the boat, like she was showing off her baby.
We went with the Pacific Whale Foundation, which is a non-profit organization. All profits go towards research, education and conservation, which is great. We had a blast.
Here's a video of the calf breaching and the mother right next to it. (Ignore the guy talking. He's referring to the Humpback Whale songs we were listening to from the hydrophone they had in the water for a bit.)
CLICK FOR VIDEO:WHALE BREACHING
-Miranda
A gorgeous view from the boat.
This was right before she breached. Normally showing the fluke is sort of a goodbye. This generally means they are diving, so I was not ready to try and take a photo of her breaching. Oh well.
The Banyan Tree in Lahaina. This is one tree, and only about one quarter at that. The main trunk isn't even shown in this photo.
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We've still been pretty tired, so we took the morning to get some work done, then decided to try boogie boarding. We rented a couple boogie boards and went to the nearby beach. It was sort of fun, but the waves were really messy. There were a bunch of reverse waves, so it would mess you up even if you did catch the wave. We stayed out a little bit, Joe more than me. We checked out the touristy Lahaina area that evening. There were some cute shops and neat galleries, but almost nothing for a couple vegetarians... All grills or burger joints. We finally found a 50's style burger place that had 4 different veggie burger options.
The next day we were scheduled to pick Laura up from the airport! Her flight ended up being delayed for a couple hours, so we didn't pick her up until 2pm. From there we picked up a snorkel set for her, and headed to Kaanapali beach to take her snorkeling. She had a lot of fun and we even saw a turtle! Afterwards, we went for a nice walk, then back home for a relaxing dinner.
-Miranda
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Here's the video of the flood in Paia that Joe took. The Silver car across the road was our rental at the time.
CLICK FOR VIDEO:PAIA FLOOD
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This is going to be a long one... Sorry.
Unfortunately, we did not get much sleep... That night, it poured. Hard. And it was really windy. We went to bed before 10. There were some people talking and were a little noisy, but it wasn't terrible. Then Joe thought he felt something hit the bed next to him. Thinking he had been falling asleep and imagining it(plus not having a light or flashlight) he lay back down to go to sleep. Well, not long later, he gets a stinging pain in his arm.
A centipede bit him!! It dropped down from a hole in the ceiling above his head and bit him! He and a guy that happened to be staying there that's a bug expert, went back to the room and looked for it. They ended up bagging it up with alcohol to kill it. Joe read up online and found out that you are supposed to ice it and put papaya on it (the enzymes in papaya neutralize the venom). There just happened to be half a frozen papaya in the freezer. That ended up taking all the pain away and he hasn't had a problem since. Without that, the pain can apparently last 2-3 days.
We didn't end up getting to sleep until well after midnight. When we woke in the morning, it was still raining. The foot of my bed was soaked because of the rain coming in the window. The street outside the hostel was a river. Not far farther down the road, the water was apparently knee deep. Turns out that, that was the worst flooding in Paia in 20 years. Joe took some video, but I don't know if we'll figure out how to post it in a timely manner.
We had to return the rental car that afternoon. We headed into the airport, returned the car and then walked back into town since we had missed the bus by merely seconds. We looked around at the hotels in the area since we weren't getting any answers about places to stay, but they were all pretty pricey for getting only a bed to sleep on. There was a different hostel in the main town, Wailuku. We started hoofing it for there, which was over a 2 mile walk. A nice girl yelled out the window of her car asking if we wanted a ride. So, we were lazy and hopped in.
The North Shore Hostel was great. Very professional. Very clean. Definitely less 'community' feeling than the previous one, but we did have a private room this time. It was definitely very quiet by 10pm.
Friday we spent the morning trying to figure out a rental situation. There was a guy that posted an ad about staying in a master bedroom with an adjacent room and a 'backdoor' to the beach. It was an all right price, so we jumped on it since it was available even though it wasn't really in an area we wanted.
Our original plan was to try and get away without a rental car, but that just wasn't working, especially since this place was at least 2 miles away from the closest bus stop. We headed back to the airport and rented another car. We got a Jeep this time, which is not great gas mileage, but it's pretty nice for the slightly rougher roads.
The place was not at all what we expected... It's behind a security gate, near a golf course, a 10 minute drive up a crazy road. It's in a $7 million dollar home that the guy is working on, so it's not done, which isn't a big deal, but the main living room/kitchen area really doesn't have any furniture in it yet and since the whole place is stone tile, everything echos like crazy! You can't do anything in the kitchen without making a huge racket.
We had already paid and signed paper work, but were feeling pretty awful about the place, so Joe talked to him to see if we could get out of it. We realized we could stay at the hostel for cheaper, and with the rental car, we could easily get to places, especially when Laura is here, since it's more centrally located. Where we are now takes an hour to start getting to where we want to be. The guy said that if he finds someone else, then we can, go, which makes total sense.
-Miranda
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This morning didn't start out so great, but we didn't have to be out of the hotel until noon. So, we stayed and did a lot of research on places we could stay. Joe emailed a number of places and made notes for ones that had phone numbers to call later. Once we felt we had done all the research we could, we headed out to Kihei to find some lunch.
We went to Joy's Place, which is a super cute, small natural restaurant. They had all organic foods and some 'raw' items on the menu as well. I ended up getting an Indo Crunch Wrap that was amazing. It was basically a giant fresh roll. Instead of a tortilla, it was wrapped in rice paper.
After leaving there we went for a walk along the water. It was super windy today. Joe really wanted to play in the water, so we went to a different beach park that looked more like it was all sand. When we were looking around, there was another couple that had just been in the water. Joe went to talk to them and they told us if you go underwater and be very quiet, you can hear the whales singing.
The waves were relatively crazy (not terrible) but we did as they mentioned and you definitely could. It was very, very neat. We did some body surfing, then headed in. We sat in the parking lot there calling places. We only got a hold of a couple places. One sounded like a really odd, possibly creepy situation, so we just went for a room that almost seemed like it was a hostel. When we got there, Joe couldn't find the lady, and it seemed a little more slummish than we wanted to deal with. From there we decided to head out to Paia and find dinner and a place to stay out there. There was a hostel there that we figured we could check out.
We got to Paia, went for a little walk and found the Rainbow Surf hostel. We were hoping for a room, but the rooms were booked up, so we are staying in one of the dorms. There are 6 beds per room, so it's not too bad. Hopefully we don't have a snorer in the room.
We walked back into Paia to get some dinner. There is a Vietnamese Vegetarian restaurant in town. It was very good. We had walked around some and saw a Creperie, so we went there for dessert. It was excellent.
Hopefully we get some sleep tonight. They have a strictly enforced quiet time of 10, so hopefully it works out.
-Miranda
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