Did I Mention We Were In Hawaii?

This is part two of my travel update of our Hawaii trip. If you’re lucky, it will be my last time bringing it up.

Day of Lounging

After several days of lots-of-stuff-to-do (follow that link above, dorkus) Becky insisted that we take a day off. Between swimming at the pool, lunch at CJ’s Comfort Zone (right next to our lodging location), and an afternoon at the “beach club” I was able to finish 60% of the #1 best seller (and let me tell you it’s a good example of why the popular vote may be a bad thing — it’s got a good back-story but it’s basically a dime-store detective novel.) Lounging is definitely a must-see if you go to Maui.

The Luau

For dinner after our day of rest Becky signed us up for the Old Lahaina Luau . We weren’t sure it was a great idea since dinner theater is almost always pure torture. Evidenced by the 3 rolls of film I burned through during our dinner, though, I’d say they’ve got a good thing going. It’s more traditional than a lot of Hawaiian luaus (no fire dancing, for example) with poi-making demonstrations, a digging-up-the-pig show and a great dance show abreviating the history of Hawaii.

Mendes Ranch

We woke up early Tuesday morning and drove to the windward side of Maui to the Mendes Ranch for a morning horse ride. I tried to pass myself off as an “intermediate” rider (since I did “showdeo” for a few years as a kid) which apparently meant I got the difficult horse. When I say difficult, I mean stubborn. My horse, Patch aka “Patches”, should have been nicknamed “Passive”. Maybe he wasn’t too happy to have my 200 lb ass on his back but he completely ignored every kick I gave him, and then he ignored the leather strap one of the cowboys gave me becasue he pitied my inability to communicate my desire for Patch to keep up with the rest of the pack. Every once-in-a-while one of the cowboys would ride up behind me and Patch and he’d get nervous and break into a trot, but when it was just he and I he wasn’t going anywhere fast. Becky’s horse, Samantha, was sweet but had a real dislike for other horses, so she’d snort and kick like a madhorse when others rode near her.

The Road To Hana

If you go to Maui, everyone will insist that you take the road to Hana. I think this is more of an initiation rite than the good advice it is presented to be. The road to Hana is about 50 miles long with 20-30 spots where the road is reduced to a single car width. So after 2 1/2 to 3 hours of driving on a curvy middle-of-nowhere pray-to-God-you-don’t-break-down it’s-a-miracle-its-paved road, you get to a town with one General store that closes early and no restaurants (unless you count the road-side smoothie/cane juice stand.) Maybe I was having a negative experience due to my exposure to the legendary Hawaiian hospitality:

Travel Tips

Here’s a travel tip for you: Get a CostCo membership before you go to Hawaii. Seriously, as expensive as food is in Maui you are better off getting a room with a kitchenette and buying bulk food at CostCo your first day on the island. Even better, the cheapest place to find Hawaiian music, DVDs and books is CostCo.

Go Home

My last full day on Maui started to wear me out. The first bad sign of the day was a hand-made grafitti sign on the road out to Mendes Ranch. It was our first time driving through a truly local neighborhood and we were greeted with the epithet “Hawaii Island, Not Haole Island”. On the road to Hana we saw more in this vien including the oddly-worded “No Hawaiian, No Aloha” and the very simple “Go Home”. Between that and the IZ pro-Hawaii songs we were listening to I started feeling a little caucasian guilt about the occupation of Hawaii. It was definitely time to go home.

Going Home

We took our sweet time getting to the airport, even stopping at a mall to catch Disney’s Teacher’s Pet (which had one scene where a character was holding a magazine titled “GArY Magazine”). Our plane left Maui at 6pm Weds and arrived at DFW at 6am Thurs. I had the bright idea of taking a hyrdocodone to chill me out so I could sleep the whole way. Instead it just made me high as a kite and I finished the other 40% of the #1 best seller (still just a dime-store detective novel), only getting an hour or so of shut-eye before the plane landed in the big D.

p.s. Be on the lookout for many many photos. I dropped 16 rolls in the mail and two more slide-film rolls at Wal-greens yesterday.

Posted by etrigan at January 23, 2004 2:44 PM