Aloha from Lahaina

For all of my friends who might normally receive a postcard, please consider this your postcard. I'll add a pic when I return!

Maui is more than we imagined. This is T's second trip, my first. On his first trip a couple years ago he was here with a convention that had him inside conference rooms from 8AM to 8PM at an expensive hotel that in his words, wasn't worth the money.

He swore he'd never come back, but when I was searching for a vacation locale I ruled out Mexico and came up with Hawaii. I decided I wanted to keep my tourism dollars in the US, thank you.

Fine, he said, I'll go to Maui.

That's all the background, since then, we have had a serendipitious, wondrous, adventurous trip. We woke at 5:30AM the first full day (PDT finally came in handy) and drove the road to Hana. We swam in one of the seven sacred pools which are not actually sacred but just very cold. T jumped from a 15 foot waterfall into the super cold water as I treaded water. We congratulated ourselves on leaving early enough that all of the tour buses were behind us. We ignored the car rental warnings and took the gravel road back and marveled at the microclimates of the east side of Maui. Within minutes we drove through arid valleys, lush mountains, and rain that disappeared unceremoniously. We stopped at a Napa-esce winery along the way but didn't care for the pineapple wine.

We arrived back at the Royal Lahaina Resort around 4:30 and I chose the restaurant du noir by opening a page in a restaurant guide. Feast of Lele it was...we called and they had one cancellation five minutes earlier. The price tag was a bit biting at $105pp but we jumped at it and didn't regret. It helped when they said those magic words... "open bar." The dancing was marvelous and the food was original and tasty. The people next to us said they had made their reservation two weeks in advance and we just smiled with the laws of synchronicity on our side.

Tuesday I leaped into my fears of salt water in my eyes as we took a two hour SURFING lesson! As it would turn out the main prinicples of surfing are balance and focus. For my YT readers, does that sound familiar? To get up on the board, the first move looks remarkably like up-dog. I did get up about 4 or five times and have pics to prove it, as well as the board rash on my inner elbows. Was it worth it? HELL YES! Yes, I got water in my eyes, yes it stung, yes it was likely my sunscreen, but I was surfing!!! Our instructor was this super-cool local named Donnie who could have been Cheech's cousin. HIs first piece of advice for me: don't give up on yourself. Yikes. For the record, I am counting these two hours towards my weekly yoga quota.

Wednesday we went snorkeling with the Pacific Whale Foundation people and a hundred other tourists. We swam with turtles at Turtle Town (I saw two, T saw two different ones) and later swam at Molokini Crater where we saw a super cool pink and blue neon fish among others. Last night for dinner we drove into Lahaina - a cool little beach town down the road from our hotel that remindes me of Key West. We ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise sitting at the bar chit-chatting with the bartender who did admit that at the end of the night the servers separate the receipts with phone numbers from the ones that don't.

Today we leave on a midnight flight (to Georgia, no, just to Vegas) and are trying to keep the Aloha in our hearts for a little bit longer. We're getting side by side massages on the beach in about half an hour and going to the Aquarium this afternoon when we check out of the hotel.

The Royal Lahina Resort is a great 3 star place with friendly staff. Having worked for a five star hotel in the early 90s had tainted me once, but now I am a down to earth 3 star hotel kind of girl. Give me a decent bed, clean sheets, and a surf I can hear from my room and I'm a happy girl. For the record, I booked air/hotel on Hotwire three weeks in advance and got excellent prices.

Enough for now, aloha and I'll see you all soon.