The plan is to dive into each of our days on the trip as separate posts. It might not be 7 posts, but we’ll see how I do at getting through the content. it might be more, might be less.
Day 1 of our trip to Maui was relatively speaking, uneventful. It involved a lot of shopping and generally getting ourselves organized for the rest of the week. But there were still some fun things to share…
We were all still on Vancouver time (or maybe even Eastern time for Mom…) and so despite the late arrival, all of us were up relatively early on Wednesday morning. We had mostly unpacked an got settled in the night before, but this was our first glimpse of the condo in daylight. We had a decent view of the water from the upstairs loft bedroom (where Justine and I were sleeping), and even from the lanai (patio/deck), you could see a bit.
The view from the lanai of the condo. It’s hard to see, but you could see the ocean a little bit…
I had recently bought a new camera (much more to come from that with the pics from over the week!) and so while Justine and Mom had their coffee and got organized, I had a bit of a chance to play with my new toy and start to figure it out. It’s still a Canon, but one of the new mirrorless “SLRs”. I also bought a new long lens that I am eager to see how it works. It was surprisingly inexpensive for an 800mm lense and has some significant limitations (fixed f11), so we will see if it works well enough for my needs.
As Justine was getting organized, she already noticed some whales breaching out on the water. They were a long way off, but it seemed a good test of the new camera set-up. I cropped together 9 photos of a whale breaching and having some fun. The whale is tiny, and the photos are grainy, but you can at least see it. I don’t think I would have got anything with my previous set-up, so we'll score this one as a win.
Once we were organized, we headed out. The plan was to get all of our shopping done for the week, which meant a trip back to the airport to Costco! But before that, we headed an exit north on the “highway” and stopped by the Napili Farmers Market. It runs Wednesdays and Saturday’s and we thought it might be worth checking out.
It was only a 5 minute drive north, and so we popped up to check it out. This was our first exposure to the wind for the trip, and it was sadly a sign of things to come. I thought some of the stalls in the market were going to lift off and fly away it was so windy. It was a tiny little market - not a lot to see really but there were some nice craft vendors, some interesting food options and one vendor with local produce. And the honey was delicious!
Eventually we exhausted what there was to see and so we headed and drove back south. This was Mom’s first time really seeing the landscape and scenery of the island (it being dark when we arrived), so we went slow and let her soak everything in.
About halfway to where Costco is, there is an overlook that you can park at to get a great view out over the ocean. We stopped there for a look, braved the wind and enjoyed the sunshine. I think we saw a couple of whale blow spouts on this stop, but it’s hard to remember exactly. We did see whales from shore everyday - whether it was from the condo, the beach or as we were driving. It’s one of the coolest things about Maui in February - so many whales!
The view from the lookout, with Molokini crater in the distance.
These orange flowers were in bloom everywhere throughout or stay and quickly became favorites.
After the quick stop, we continued on to Costco. The store was a bit crazy, but we managed to find everything that we were looking for and then some (as always).
One of the more hilarious things we saw in the Costco was this amazing little greenhouse. I couldn’t believe what good value it seemed. Solid cedar, well made and so cheap! I would have bought one if that had been in Canada.
The hilarious part is that the company that makes them is based out of Mount Forest Ontario! Who knew? Sadly I cannot order the same product for twice the price off their web site. And no luck finding that one in Costco in Canada.
We finished up our shopping and and continued on with our day. The next stop was one that Justine and I have been looking forward to for years - lunch at Coconuts, and their famous fish tacos.
This part of the day started badly - we went to the original location and discovered it was closed! Thankfully the second location was open, and after a bit of a wait we got down to eating delicious fish tacos!
Justine enjoying the long-awaited lunch!
After lunch, we hung out in Kihei for a little bt. We stopped on the main dragged for some shave ice, and then wandered across the road to one of the parks with a nice beach. We sat and had our shave ice and watched some guys pruning the palm trees. I would not want that job. Oh, and there were so many chickens that seem to own the park!
The guys working the palm trees were pretty amazing. They climb the trees with foot spikes and a machete and hack off what seems like a lot of fronds. And they take out the coconuts as well. That one makes a bit more sense - no way you want one of those falling on you from 20-30’ up!
After watching these guys for a while, we headed over to the beach. We walked along for a bit and watched all the action going on nearby.
After spending a bit of time at the beach, we headed back home to finish our shopping (a quick stop at a grocery store for the items we needed that we did not want “Costco sized”), and then home to unpack and get organized.
Before deciding on dinner, we walked across the street to check out the little beach that was quite close to the condo. We had some hope for maybe decent snorkeling and swimming. As we wandered over, we were surprsied ot find a green sea turtle pulled up on the beach! What a great start to our trip - a turtle for Mom! Thankfully, the people on the beach were giving it a proper amount of space and leaving it be. We sat and watched it for a while, as the sun sank on our first day in Maui.
For dinner that night, we ended up just having a light meal with some of the groceries that we bought, given how huge (and delicious) lunch had been. We were pretty wiped after a busy first day and none of us lasted particularly long that night.