Day 3: the day of the harrowing drive

Wednesday, August 10th


After breakfast in the room and relaxing at the beach for a while,

we decide to take an exploratory drive north to see the sights.  The hotel had printed out a guided drive for us to use to go sightseeing north of the hotel.  It was a fun day...

Doesn't this look like something outta Star Trek?

We found the Nakalele Blowhole:

 Right before the water came up



Water coming through the blow hole

Then we found the Olivine Pools which are natural lava swimming pools.

Our next stop was to be for "the 'best' banana bread on the island!"  Noelle was pretty excited about this bread so off we went.  It wasn't long before we found ourselves on a very narrow one-lane road hugging a winding mountain side with a sheer drop down and no guard rail.  There were only a few turn-outs that were the width of half a car for the entire length of the road that we could see.  There was no place to turn around for a least a few miles.  We were horrified and befuddled.  We had no idea how we had suddenly found ourselves in this predicament.  Neither of us remembered seeing any warning signs.  The map we were following simply said "narrow roads."  There was absolutely no sign that said "Enter and Die."  About two ghastly miles later, we came upon a large turn out in which we promptly gave up on the banana bread and turned around.  Unfortunately, this meant retracing our steps back to the safe roads.  As luck would have it, we made most of those miles out and back without encountering any cars going in the opposite direction.  But our luck did run out at the very end of the experience when we came upon 3 cars in a row.  We were on the cliff-drop side of the road; they were on the much preferred mountain side.  As we sat at a stand-still in the face-off wondering who the lucky one would be to back up (panic rising in Noelle) the first of the 3 cars began to back up and on-to the mountain as much as they could leaving JUST enough room for us to eek by - and we do mean JUST enough room; we were inches from that cliff.  Noelle closed her eyes and covered them with her hands (Eric was driving) and prepared to die in a firey crash aside her new husband.

In the retelling of this story from Eric's perspective, it wasn't that bad.  But Noelle disagrees wholeheartedly and to this day maintain that we nearly died on our honeymoon.

That night we had dinner at the chef's counter at the Hula Grill in Whaler's Village.  It was fun; we got to watch the cooks do a very intricate dance around each other as they worked together to prepare at least 1/2 the large, up-scale, very busy restaurant's dinners.

More Pina Coladas, Mai Tais, some appetizers, our main courses, and individual desserts later, we uncomfortably made our way back to our room via the complimentary hotel shuttle that moved us about town so we could drink with dinner.  It is about this time we started to wonder if one could even get drunk on Maui.  We weren't sure if it was because they were putting the equivalent of 1 oz of rum in each of our drinks, the sheer quantity of food we were consuming with the drinks, or the island itself.  We suspect it's the combination of all three.

Day 2: the day we set sail

Tuesday, August 9th

We woke up around 9:30 feeling more rested than we had in at least a week.  Got dressed and headed down to Front Street (one of the 2 areas to go to in Lahaina) to hit up Cheeseburger in Paradise for their LocoMoco breakfast; a mission we'd been sent on by Kam.  It did not disappoint.  Coffee, LocoMoco and fresh pineapple at a table at an open window right over the water.  We're sure it doesn't get any better than this!

Here's the view from our breakfast window:

Then we hit up the local grocery store to stock our kitchen and hit the beach for a walk in the 76 degree, clear water.

This was the night of our first excursion; a dinner cruise.  We got ourselves down to Whaler's Village (the other of the two areas to go to) where we were to check in for our dinner cruise.  Since we were early, we went to Lailahni's for the best Mango Pina Colada of the entire trip!!  Fresh pineapple juice!

After that, we boarded the boat for what ended up being a pretty lame excursion.  For appetizers we had vegetables and chips and dip.  We were served rotisserie chicken, grilled ono, salad, rice pilaf and bread on paper plates out of foil serving trays.  And then there were bite sized brownies for dessert.  It was probably the worst dinner we had while in Maui and the cruise itself was just sailing along the shore.  The sunset was as weak as the drinks. We guess the only redeeming thing was we met other honeymooning couples on the cruise and we all got to swap wedding war-stories.  Oh, and we got a ton of photos:

Because it was, of course, a really nice night - we're pretty sure it was between 75 and 85 degrees the whole time we were on Maui - we got off the boat at the first stop and walked along the beach back to our hotel.

When we got back to our hotel, we noticed how dead it was there.  It's about this time that we figured out there wasn't much night life at the resorts.  Once the sun sets, the day is over for all.  So we retired to our room for another looooong night's sleep.  11 hours this time! 

Day 1: the day we finally slept

Monday, August 7th

We're finally off on our honeymoon, first class seats on American Airlines (thank you, Greg and Angela!!!!).  We will never again travel anything but first class.  At least until the next time we buy tickets.  This is the life.  Sitting in big seats, sipping champagne, reading our magazines while the rest of the plane boards.
The trip was uneventful and relaxing (which is completely opposite from our usual air travel experiences).  Two really bad movies later, we landed in a 78-degree Maui with the trade winds blowing anything under 90 lbs away!  Holy cow, time for the ponytail.
We got our car and began the drive from the airport to the West Coast of Maui where many of the resorts are located.  Destination: The Westin Maui Villas in Ka'anapali, Lahaina to be precise (thank you, John and Heather!!!!).

It is paradise personified!  We are in heaven.  We are never leaving.  We are exhausted!  And starving!  After getting moved in to our room, we went down to the pool bar and grill for the best ahi poke, mai tai and pina coloda of our entire trip thus far.  Eric had the shrimp blt and Noelle had the fish and chips.  Everything was "resort quality" which is to say: frickin awesome!  But eating reminded us how tired we were so we went back to the room to rest up for dinner.  An hour later, it was time for dinner.  This resort life seemed to work well for us.  We were pretty sure at this point that we'd found our true calling.

For dinner, we found Star Noodle, which ended up being one of the best places we ate during the entire trip. 

http://www.starnoodle.com

Its off the beaten path, on a dark, go-nowhere street.  There were people spilling out into the parking lot waiting for tables.  Luckily, we were good with sitting at the bar.

Yes, those are steamed pork buns.  Yes, they are as good as they look.  Also, don't miss the Pohole Salad or the Vietnamese Crepe.  And the mango pudding does not suck either:

Since we'd eaten our fill, it was time to finally sleep; something neither of us had done much of in about 5 nights.
So we slept. And we slept.  And we sleeeeeeept!  12 hours later, it was 9am Maui time and we were time-change-adjusted.  Man, we are good at this! (it didn't hurt that the room was pitch black and dead silent the whole time we slept)