Hawaii Day Five – On to Maui!

The alarm went off at 3:30 AM !!!

Another early start … Arghhhh!

But, by 5:45 we were dutifully in front of the hotel to meet our van driver and to be taken back to the Honolulu airport. At the airport, we partook of curbside check-in to minimize our luggage lugging, went through Security, and then went in search of breakfast. There weren’t many options at that ungodly hour, but muffins from Starbucks would have to do. Our plane was on time and by 9:00 AM, we were in Maui!

Our rental SUV was ready for us, but not for the number of bags we had (and we thought we packed ‘light’!), so some of it had to ride with the back seat passengers and the driver had to do without being able to see out of his rearview mirror (but then, Tom was used to the teanie tiny mirrors on the dune buggy that were useless).

We headed for our new hotel, er, a B&B in Lahaina, a block from the ocean and in the middle of town. We arrived hours before they would have our rooms ready, but we checked in and then checked out our lunch options in town (again with the eating….).

First stop was a place named “Cheeseburger-In-Paradise”, which turned out to be a great lunch stop! It was the first place on this entire trip that offered good food at reasonable prices! Everything was included instead of al a carte. We even got all sorts of advice from our waitress about what to see/do on Maui.

After that, we strolled along the harbor to check out the whale watch boats and decide what we should do his week. With knowledge (and brochures) in hand, we headed back to the hotel to see if they’d let us in our rooms early. They did, so we caught up on some much needed sleep, then worked on some picture processing for this blog (after combining the patio furniture of our two rooms onto one). All that activity lasted until late in the evening, when we decided we’d better go find some grub.

Another walk through downtown landed us at a seafood restaurant on the second floor overlooking the ocean. We can safely say we’ve never eaten as many meals outdoors as we have on this trip! I don’t think more than two have been completely indoors!

After a late dinner in which Tom decided to experiment with a fish called “Ono” (and learned not to experiment in the future), we finalized our plan for the week (not always an easy task for this group) and called it a night.

The decision for our first full day of sightseeing in Maui was to drive “The Road to Hana”, a 36 mile ride along the northern and eastern coast to Hana, a town still very much set up like old-time Hawaii. From the brochure and the waitress at breakfast, we thought this could be done in about 4 hours….. check back again to see if our timing was accurate!