Thursday 13 – Vacation photos

Don’t you hate looking at other people’s vacation photos? Where they invite you over and sit you down and make you watch 2 hours worth of slides on their wall? Well, it’s my turn…here are 13 pictures of our trip to Maui, starting with this one. This is the view from our condo. We could walk through the complex shown and sit on the beach. It was a lovely uncrowded beach with folks swimming and watching the sunset. I know, I already showed you another version of this picture, but I did love waking up to this view every morning.

Our first morning in Maui, Ted and I woke up early, and went to breakfast at a nearby place, Java Jazz. Ted took this picture of ‘the Jeffersons’. It’s a funky bar/restaurant. The vibe was really cool. The food was OK, not fabulous. I ordered a veggie omelet with bacon, and it was kind of bland. But the feel of the place was so good, I would have gone back if we had gone out for breakfast again. I didn’t really want to eat inside a restaurant (COVID shy), so lunch and dinner, or even later breakfast, were a no for us. The place was generally pretty crowded with a line in front when we drove by.

We went for a hike on our second full day, and saw some beautiful views. So interesting to have the volcanic rock and then the beach right there. The resort over there to the right looked pretty nice, but also spendy.

I’m not sure when the last time was that I saw a pay phone, but we came across this one, and another right next to it…Ted checked, and it worked!

We didn’t do a lot of excursions on our trip, but we did go on a 3 hour boat tour, searching for dolphins. Problematic, because it turns out that they are nocturnal animals, so if you get too close to them, you are probably disturbing their sleep rhythms. Boats are required to stay 500 feet away and not approach, but dolphins are curious animals, and they come to the boats sometimes. So for about 2 1/2 hours we just zoomed around, which was lovely, but we wanted to see dolphins. Happily the people on the boat knew what they were doing, and we found a large pod of spinner dolphins, and they came over to us. It was fabulous. Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure I would do it again, but it was lovely.

I can see why there are rainbows on the license plates in Hawaii…We may have seen at least one rainbow every day of our time there. Ted captured this one from the boat on our dolphin trip.

This is the village that that crazy road I posted about on Monday leads to, but we didn’t make it that far. Way too scary.

Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac lives in Maui, and has a restaurant. I guess he comes in and plays music there pretty often, maybe once a month, and they have other live music most evenings. It’s pretty popular, the only time I could get a reservation was at happy hour. It was a lovely view, and the food was good, though I would have rather eaten off of the dinner menu, this was was pretty limited. There is a very cool gallery downstairs where you can buy prints of famous photos of musicians. I saw one of David Bowie that I wanted, but not enough to spend $500 on it. Ted saw one of The Who that was pretty cool. Again, expensive.

The first few days of our trip, there were too many low clouds to the west, so we did not see any sunsets. But finally we found ourselves at the right place, at the right time, and enjoyed this lovely one. This is from the beach across the street and past the hotel/resort from us. If it didn’t take so much driving, we might have driven to the top of the local volcano to see either the sunrise or the sunset. Check the link, the pictures are stunning, and I think I might want to try it another time. But this was not that time, we have had a lot going on in our lives, with Ted losing his sister, me working to sell my Grandma’s house, all of that. It’s over 3 1/2 hours from our part of the island, and a big part of that would be on a very dark road of twists and turns. And bonus, cows on the road!

Next to the rainbow eucalyptus trees from yesterday’s post, there was a little grave yard. The graves all looked pretty old, but I was taken by this one. I thought if a mermaid had to be buried on land, this might be a good resting place. I told Maya it was Ariel.

We did some snorkeling while we were there, but the weather was pretty windy, which means the water is more cloudy, so we didn’t see a lot of fish, though we did see some and it was fun to just drift with the gentle warm waves. To make up for it, I took some nice pictures at the aquarium.

I had hoped to see turtles when snorkeling, but didn’t have a lot of luck with that. I saw one as it drifted by. This is at the aquarium, obviously. The Maui Ocean Center has a pretty cool program where they are working to repopulate the ocean with turtles. They breed them there, and they free the majority of the babies into the ocean. They keep a few (6 maybe this time) and have them there for education for 2 years, which gives them a chance to grow past their most vulnerable age. Once they are 2, they are about 50 pounds, and have a much better chance of making it in the ocean. These siblings will be released when they get to that age, and they will breed some more.

After the aquarium, we thought we would see if we could find some turtles on the beach. This beach is near the airport, and is known as a place where turtles like to have a nap at the end of their day. We got lucky, and here they were, dozing away. Very cool.

After the beach, we had about 4 hours to kill before we had to return our car and go to the airport. It was going to be dark soon, and not much to do in the dark if you don’t want to hang out in a restaurant or a bar…so we went to a movie! Our first time in a theater since COVID started. It was mostly empty, and they were those big luxury seats where no one sits close together anyway. So that was great. We saw the newest 007 film, and while I’m not really a big fan of the franchise, it was really good. Daniel Craig is definitely my favorite James Bond.

So that’s my Thursday 13 of pictures of our vacation…it was really nice to take it easy for a week, and really much needed. We had a great time and missed Mulder a lot. He stayed with Ted’s parents and had a fabulous time in their big back yard. I think he wants us to move in with them so he can have access to it all of the time.