Blogs from Maui, Hawaii, United States, North America - page 6

Maui was reserved for the last 7 days. Beautiful beaches, nature, friendly people, good food, not to mention amazing snorkelling with lots of colourful fish, huge turtles, and inevitable whale watching. Once again, we lived on ahi poke and fish delicacies from a local fish market in Honokowai. Sadly, no pictures of poke, but good memories. Maui is a perfect place to relax and take it easy ...... read more

Aloha, Our first stop was at the Maui Ocean Center with a guide who is an Ocean Naturalist. Beautifully laid out. The animals in their care are fed according to their needs, so feedings and shows are not offered. How refreshing! They also concentrate on breeding programmes with any marine life that is losing population. Sea Turtles are a good example. They are bred and then kept until they reach adulthood and can e returned to the ocean. Our afternoon was spent at Iao Valley State Park, considered a sacred site by the Hawaiian people. Very lush and green; they get 400 inches of rain per year. Our leader was a Traditional Hawaiian Medicinal Healer. He explained the many uses of indigenous plants. For example, the state tree, the Kukui or Candlenut Tree. There is so ... read more

Geo: 20.8775, -156.677Today we visit Maui. The second-largest of the islands, Maui boasts 32 miles of beaches that are ideal for swimming, snorkeling, sea kayaking and sunning. Most ships call on Kahului, but ours docks at Lahaina, which offers splendid views of the island of Lanai. In the 1800s, Lahaina was fought over by whalers and missionaries, who were constantly battling over the lax morals of the whaling outposts and raucous taverns that were scattered along the port. Front Street was home to these outposts.Today, Front Street remains the main thoroughfare for Lahaina, although looking quite differently than back in its whaling days. Instead of raucous taverns and whaling outposts, the streets are lined with great restaurants, shopping, art galleries and plenty of sight seeing and people watching.We have no plans for today's port. Instead, we ... read more

We heard the island of Maui is beautiful but we weren’t on it long enough to determine that. As soon as we were tendered to the pier, we boarded a catamaran and sailed away to a snorkeling spot. Was lucky enough to spot three smaller turtles and get photos. As we were leaving that area, we noticed a very large turtle swimming by. We had lunch on the catamaran and spent leisurely time aboard. Upon our return to Lahaina, we walked into town and bought some T-shirts and then met some friends at the local bar. Took the last tender back to the boat at 4:30. Needless to say, we didn’t have much time to explore Maui. Maybe the next time…... read more

Geo: 20.8775, -156.677Times are not as they used to be. We are a crew of middle-aged traveller/tourists who like to believe we are as we were in our twenties. The Internet described our proposed hike as needing 'legs of steel' but, alas, our knees were made of pretzels or something equally unstable. We are a colony of hurtin' knees and feet. We set out on the Lahaina Pali Trail following the gradual incline along a desert-like landscape. The hot sun bore down on us as we walked along with a spring in our step until....we looked above with trepidation at the steepness ahead. In no time our pleasant gradient turned into a 400 meter vertical climb. Given that my theme for 2015 is 'graceful pacing', instead of trying to keep up with the group, I listened ... read more