Blogs from Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, United States, North America

I’m woken by my alarm at the obscene time of 1.15am for today’s little exercise - a tour to the top of Mount Haleakala to watch the sunrise. Issy’s decided to give this one a miss, and perhaps unsurprisingly didn’t seem overly interested in my suggestion that she get up to cook me a nice Hawaiian breakfast before I head off. The Mount is an impressive 3,055 metres high. We read that it‘s thought to have last erupted back in 1790, and volcanologists “think” that it’s now dormant. I assume this means they think it probably won’t blow its top today, which of course means that it still might. I hope Issy doesn’t know something that I don’t and that’s why she’s still tucked up in bed as I head off into the night. I’ve been ... read more

Today we head off on our first venture beyond our shores since the dreaded COVID hit back in early 2020. The main reason is of course to go to Canada to visit our beloved daughter Emma, who we haven’t seen for going on three years. We’ll then be continuing on to Europe, for all up nearly three months away from the cold and gloom of Melbourne in winter. Organising travel seems to have become a lot more complicated in the intervening period. Every country now seems to have developed its own unique set of rules for managing its visitors in times of the dreaded virus. We discover that the EU tried to introduce some uniformity amongst its 27 member states by developing an entry form that all visitors could use. This seemed like a good idea ... read more

What else can go wrong? I accidenally published this blog entry withut the photo captions. Sigh. The rest of the tet is the same. The saga continues… I was in considerable pain from the left hip down to my ankle. Barb and Dianne drove me to the ER at Maui Memorial Hospital where I got to hurry up and wait for someone to talk to. The triage nurse was hilarious. After asking all the important questions he turned with a serious look on his face and asked if I had considered that it might just be "old man's disease". I'm pretty sure he knew his audience and wouldn't have said that to just anyone. They did x-ray my hip area and assured me that wasn’t a problem (I was concerned after my fall a few years ... read more

Well, we are actually back in Canada after two weeks on Maui. Where was the blog you say? In the excitement described herein, I managed to lose my computer charge cord and my iPad Mini isn't up to the job of blogging. So back to the beginning... In 1994, Dianne and I went to Hawaii. We had such a great time that we said we should come back "next year". Well, next year finally arrived, albeit 26 years later. Friends go to Maui every year in the January time frame so we decided to bite the bullet and join them for a couple of weeks. The weather in the south coast area of B.C. has been a bit weird this year. Snow and strong winds have played havoc with ferry and air travel. Because we had ... read more

Today we woke up in Maui. Well, actually we are anchored off the coast and had to use the ship’s tenders (lifeboats) to ferry our way across to the island. They simply do not have a pier large enough to accommodate our ship. We had an early excursion so we started with a 6:15 wake-up call. David went to the Horizon Court to get some drinks and then to the International Café for Breakfast Sandwiches (very similar to Egg McMuffins) and pastries. All this was because we had to be in the Crown Grill by 7:30 – which we were. Most of the people were sent down all the steps in the Princess Theater, but because we had a walking stick we stayed in the restaurant and were given advanced notice when it was time to ... read more