My mom was able to manage our children for a week while we explored and relaxed in Hawaii.
Here are our photos from Maui along with some other ones around Cochrane around the same time.
First a video of Walter reading on his own
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My buddy Rene came to visit for a tour of skiing, hanging with children, and going to a Flames/Habs game.
Here's his terrible beard in our hot tub.
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After barely making my flight to Boston (due to Natalia's Nanaimo flight being late), and then
fighting to get back from there in time for a quick turn-around, Natalia and I happily made a
relaxed flight to Maui to start our trip. We started at Costco to load up for the week, and ran
into these roosters trying to eat our hot dogs.
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Natalia and I got checked into our condo, and we needed to get down to the ocean to see the water!
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Watching the sun set over Lanai to the west.
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Having breakfast from our 'partial ocean view' condo on the 2nd floor of Honua Kai Konea building.
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After getting settled into our routine and then consulting the weather, it looked like a good day for
a tour. Here's Natalia shopping for a beach hat at the Lahaina market.
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New beach hat and picnic lunch at one of the many beaches along the highway.
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With a bit of mixed weather, we opted to go 'up-island' and went up to the Kula Botanical Gardens.
Here's a look at the map of the area. It felt like this area has been 'harvested' for a few years, ie :
not a lot of money put into it for years. But they did appear to be replacing a few things, so it's
starting to improve a bit.
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A really cool lizard at the entrance to the gardens.
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Our next stop was a lavender farm, which was more tourist trap and less farm. But still nice.
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Natalia and I looking out to the west of the island. 'Up-island' is actually the better part of ~1000m
above sea level and a different ecology than the beaches for sure.
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Natalia enjoying the sunshine. While we were in Maui, the temps in Cochrane were ~-30 deg C
so it felt that much nicer to be in the sun.
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The lavender farm. We tried to keep driving up towards the Polipoli Spring state park but the
road was closed due to earlier flooding this season.
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Christmas tree at Whaler's Village, a few km walk from our condo. Note for posterity is that
walking in wet Chacos (from snorkeling in sharp reefs) gives Paul blisters and hot spots.
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We had made plans to go back to Mama's Fish House in Paia and this was our welcome dude.
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Natalia's favourite drink, called a mint refresher. This drink wasn't on the menu anymore but
our waitress remembered this from 10+ years ago and had them make it again. See that photo HERE
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I had made the reservation as our 'anniversary' even though it was 13.5 years since we were here last.
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Natalia and I enjoying our drinks with lunch. The last time we were here, Natalia had braces
and we didn't have kids.
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One neat thing about booking lunch here is you can still see the area and the beach after dinner.
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Me with my finger up the snowman's nose.
Ride up Haleakala
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After chatting with a few friends about going to Maui, the idea of climbing Haleakala on a road
bike came up a few times. I rented a bike from Lahaina, stuffed it into the back of the car and
started from Paia. Of course, it dropped monsoon rain that morning so it was a bit challenging
from the motivation standpoint. This is a look at a wet road as the sun popped out.
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After climbing up out of the monsoons for a couple of hours, I reached the upisland area and it
started to dry off a bit. Here's the carbon bike I rented and got to ride.
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My first real break from the ride was this small grocery store where I crushed a juice before
entering the actual park.
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A look at the dry western side of Haleakala.
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Entrance to the National Park. This was shortly after my legs cramped and I fell over. It turns
out that I need to eat more food and keep my salt levels higher.
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Proving that I made it to the actual park entrance. It cost $15 to get into the park and they
only take cards, so useful to remember to bring your credit card!
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Looking up to the top of the volcano that you can't see yet.
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After cranking and sloooooooowly making my way up the mountain for 7 and a half hours, I finally made
it to the summit of Haleakala!
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A lady saw me trying to do a selfie up here and she offered to take a photo for me.
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The last curve on the road up to the summit was a tough one as it hits 20% curve just before being done.
I didn't take photos on the way down as I was trying hard not to crash. At 7.5 hours up and
1.5 hours down, I mostly tried not to lose control of this carbon bike. See the complete data
from my ride HERE .
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A good look at the total ride here
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Back to the beach for us after my legs were destroyed from my ride.
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After a day on the beach and by the pool, along with some snorkeling time, we had our second
anniversary dinner at the local restaurant of our resort - Duke's. She's wearing her
freshly made lei and enjoying dinner.
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Decent dinner and a nice view. It's pretty tough to get a sense of the colour and light level
with a camera, but it's pretty nice. Dinner's a touch expensive for value, but still tasty.
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I thought this dude was quite a winner with his shirt and hair.
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Natalia and I took a drive around the northwest arm of Maui to go snorkeling and check out
some new beach areas. This is near Slaughterhouse Beach.
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Honolua Beach can have excellent snorkeling depending on weather. It had been a bit windy and
rainy and so the water clarity wasn't as good as we hoped here.
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Cool sign at the trailhead for Honolua Beach. It turned out not to have as good snorkeling
as I wanted it to, but hopefully next time.
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Natalia and the slug (or is it a snail?) for scale.
Video of Natalia and the slug
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We popped into a cool highway-lookout spot looking at the Nakelele blowhole, although not quite all the way there.
What is cool from this northern view point is that the ocean goes all the way to Alaska from here.
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The blowhole is just the other side of this point.
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I like the line 'It is not a waterpark'. People be people.
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After the blowhole, the road gets REALLY narrow, like more narrow than anything I've ever driven.
Natalia was NOT in a happy state as we navigated this road, but it was an 'experience' to say the least.
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Once we finally got through the north road, we had a nice view of the West Maui mountains, and
could relax a bit.
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We continued driving from the north part of Maui all the way towards Kihei and down to the 'turtle beach'
which turned out to also be a bit more churny than we would have liked. This is Maluaka beach and we
would have been better off to approach it from the south side, but it was still a neat spot.
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We continued driving 'around the horn' to Ahihi-Kinau Nature Reserve, which is a really cool
spot to explore. It's too bad the south part of the island is so elitist and douchebaggy, but
this reserve would be neat to explore more. This is some of the volcanic rock that is from the
most recent volcanic eruption. See more on that "> HERE .
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In other words, only go into certain spots.
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Natalia and the Pacific Ocean from Ahihi-Kinau. I'd like to come back here during the morning
hours and snorkel here and see why it's a nature reserve.
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The lava fields extending basically all the way to the ocean. Pretty neat terrain and part of the reason
it's protected here.
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One of the cool things about this beach is that it's a mix of dead coral (the white) and pumice
or volcanic rock (the black), so it's a really neat place to walk around.
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Natalia and I at our last sunset of this trip. Natalia tells me we need to come back
annually. I say every 13 years. We'll settle somewhere in the middle.
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We had dinner in old Kihei and I was thrilled with my dinner. Good times in Maui!
Chilling in Cochrane and Grandma G's photos of time with the boys
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Henry's curling team, Lyndon, George, and Ben. George didn't make it for the Christmas event here
but these little crazies are Team Mischief.
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Henry and his brownie for his birthday. I think Henry wound up winning this year as he was
able to milk his birthday for quite some time and wind up having a birthday party later in Jan too.
