Day 3 - Maui, Hawaii

---

We woke up at 6:30 this morning. We had coffee with milk! P1 was already up sitting in the lanai area talking to his friends. We made breakfast (bread, cereal). Today’s plan was to visit West Maui Mountain including “Io needle”. We left home around 9:15 am.
First stop on the way was “Maui Tropical Plantation” in Wailuku. It is in an excellent location under the foothills of west Maui Mountains. One can tour their gardens and plantation for a fee. We preferred to use that money to buy some items such fruit jelly, perfume etc. There is a section of the plantation that is free. There was a monkey cage with couple of monkeys near a pond. It was a serene location with lots of flowering bushes.
We reached the Io Needle area around 11:30 am. Parking is limited here. There is a main park area with couple of trails. One leads to a waterfall and other to the mountain viewing area. Since, this is Summer time, we saw lots of teenagers and local kids hanging out there, jumping from bridge etc. Good views from the top. We wanted to do some substantial hike inside the rain forest. There was no proper guide or information. You could hire a local for that. By the time we left that area, it was 1 PM.
Kids were hungry and the airport area was not too far. We had another small town Pa’ia to visit. It has a Bohemian reputation with small shops and exotic collection of arts and craft stores. I had also picked a restaurant there to check out. It is ‘Café Des Ames’. Cuisine is Mediterranean and Indian. We parked in public parking and went straight to have lunch there. We ordered Crepes and Curry. That was good food! After that, we browsed the shops in that area.
There were couple good beaches in that area. The top wind surfing beach is right in Pa’ia. We went back to the car and changed. Beach was near ‘Baldwin Park’. It had a long, shallow swim area. P1 , P2 and I had a blast there.
It is an hour’s drive from there to the resort. By the time, we reached home it was 6 PM. Kids wanted to try the resort swimming pool. I spent few minutes with them there. Meanwhile, Sindhu prepared the dinner. Chapathi, MTR subjis, rice and B. milk. We sat in the lanai area and planned our next 2 days. We were tired and went to bed at 10 PM.

---