Hawaii Day 4 - Kahului

Another day, another blog about another day.

This time the boat landed at Kahului on the island of Maui. Considering we were on holiday we still had to get up fairly early in the morning for some of the shore excursions. Today we were up before 730 so we could properly sit down and enjoy the breakfast buffet. After this it was on a bus for the Best of Maui tour, not before looking back and taking a photo of the ship. We were a bit apprehensive about sharing a bus with what would likely be a large number of pensioners and otherwise minimally mobile people, but the bus driver was a pretty entertaining fellow and the places we stopped were really quite varied and interesting.

First stop was up in the Iao valley, a place where one of the last battles was fought when the old Hawaiian king Kamehameha was busy unifying (read conquering) the islands in the mid 1800s. Apparently the leader of the losing side thought this valley a good place to hide, when in fact it left him no real way to escape. I can't remember the Hawaiian name of the river we saw in this valley, but I remember it translated into something relating to "flowing with blood".

The most interesting feature of this valley is the Iao needle, shown in a "spot-the-Claire" photo. I can't remember how it got there, but I think it had something to do with erosion and/or a volcanic vent.

Next stop was one of the few remaining sugar plantations. Growing sugar is really labour intensive we were told, so the sugar industry has been declining in Hawaii since there is much cheaper labour in other parts of the world. Nevertheless, this one was still going, and they also grew a variety of other tropical fruits and plants. The mini train ride around the plantation was fairly educational, and it stopped halfway through to show us a young Hawaiian lass husking a coconut. You really haven't seen Hawaii until you've seen a young Hawaiian lass husking a coconut.

I picked Claire a flower for behind her ear, and it is tradition for a single lady to have it behind her left ear, a married lady behind her right. We were also quite impressed with our photography skills taking a photo of our rings. Lunch on the plantation was quite good, as you would expect. Again, some nice tropical fruit with some kind of glazed chicken and iced tea. Also we encountered this sweet bread that they make, which we later found out was made with Taro, a real staple in the old Hawaiian's diet.

Final stop on the Best of Maui tour was at the Maui Ocean Centre. Claire is a real fan of animals, and this extends to swimming ones too. While the Ocean Centre is a huge park, it does have a lot of fish and coral, right down from little colourful tropical reef fish to sharks and manta rays. The jellyfish tank with it's cool lighting was a highlight, and a big glass tube you can walk through and have the aforementioned sharks and manta rays swim around you. My favourites of the day were definitely the turtles and my friend the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

Once back on the boat we didn't have too much time to bum around, as we were booked on a Whale Watching and Sunset Cruise. I haven't so many photos of this, since it's enormously difficult to get a photo of the whales since they only pop up so briefly. Claire did however manage to take some cool video footage of a bunch of them surfacing and a baby calf fully jumping out of the water and onto it's back. Did I mention that by our good luck, January is the best time to see humpback whales in Hawaii?

The cruise also featured dinner, which was a pretty simple buffet of roast meats, and FREE blue hawaiian and mai tai cocktails. I think Claire and I were lucky to only have discovered this fact halfway through the cruise or we might have rolled off the boat. The sunset was nice, but once you've seen one sunset over the water I guess you've seen them all.

We went to bed pretty soon after we got back to the boat, since the following day we had an excursion we were both simultaneously dreading and looking forward to: out of bed by 3am for Haleakala at Sunrise.