We stayed at the Ritz Carlton Kapalua. It was a beautiful resort. It is kind of set up on a hill away from the beach and you walk down this path to get to the beach and restaurant.
I had never stayed at a Ritz before, so I was excited and had some pretty high expectations. As soon as we pulled up, the valet says 'Mr and Mrs Trent?'. How do they know that!?! I seriously want to know if someone knows how they figure this out. Do they have the rental car records or something and read our license? It is amazing to me.When we get to the front desk, same thing. They know who we are and tell us we have been upgraded to a suite. Yea! When the bell boy took us to our room he gave us the tour and I had to try to stay cool so as not to show myself as a Ritz newbie, but I wanted to be like 'Holy Moly!' The room was bigger than my first apartment. They had a whole bowl of fresh fruit waiting for us as well as a huge assortment of teas and coffee and I was just in heaven.
It was after dark when we got in, so we just ordered some room service and went to bed. The next morning I got up and put on my fancy robe and then went out on to the balcony. Again I wanted to just jump up and down. We had a beautiful view out over the pool and you could see the ocean on the other side of that. It was absolutely beautiful. We decided since it was our first day, and we were still tired from Oahu, we wanted to take it easy and be pampered for the day. So we rented one of the pool cabanas where you have your own fridge, TV, iPod dock, chairs and a waiter to get you whatever you want. It was pretty awesome I have to say. Here was our view from our cabana.
Another perk of going in February is that you are there in the height of whale season. I had kind of just forgotten about this, until that first night. We had reservations at Mama's Fish House, so we headed that way and on the drive out there I just happened to catch a glimpse of this in the water...
If you can't see that very well, it is a whale's tale sticking out of the water. We pulled over and Jason took a bunch of pictures. This whale was just slapping his tale on the water for I swear like 2 or 3 minutes straight. And this is just right off shore! For the rest of our trip, just about anytime you were looking out at the water you would see a whale either jumping out of the water or just a blow hole or something. They were so omnipresent that by the end of the trip you would just be like 'Oh yeah, there is another whale'. Ok, not really, it was pretty exciting every time you saw them, but they were just everywhere!
The second morning we found this little place called the Gazebo. It was this little random place in a little motel on the ocean. We got there right when it opened and still waited an hour for our food. It was worth it. If you go to Maui, eat there. I think it might have been the best meal we had and it was also the cheapest (which isn't saying much for Hawaii - everything is freakin' expensive). While we were eating we could see three whales jumping around. The waitress told us that morning before they opened that one of the whales gave birth! We started watching and you could tell one of the whales was a little baby whale! Crazy stuff.
That afternoon we had a reservation to go ziplining down the side of Haleakala. Right before we got to the point where we were supposed to zipline, we stopped at this restaurant called the Kula Lodge. This picture does not do the view justice. We were basically up on the side of this volcano, and there were all these tiers on the way down to sit at. There was a big wood burning stove for pizzas out there and the weather was kind of cool. I would highly recommend you eat here on your way up Haleakala.
After lunch, we went ziplining. If you have never done this, do it! It was SO much fun. It even started raining half way through, but we didn't care. It was a blast. We were going to go ahead and drive to the top of Haleakala after that, but then it started raining really hard and you could barely see around those curvy roads. We opted not to go careening off the side, and decided to head back to our sunnier resort.
Ahhh, isn't that better?
That night we went to the Old Lahaina luau. It is the oldest one on Maui and I loved it. I am an adventurous eater, so I enjoyed all the interesting food (except the Poi - seriously who likes that stuff?). I also loved all the dancing and the stories. I thought it was great. Jason enjoyed it for one reason only. You get one guess...
Our last full day on Maui, we decided to go exploring some more. I had read about these pools you could find if you really went looking. They were made of lava and the ocean had filled them in. The book I read this in was the only place I found any information on them and I am SO glad we sought them out. It was probably my favorite thing we did. You had to follow very specific instructions to get to them, and we got off the trail a couple times, but finally found them. We were told to look for a 'heart-shaped' pool. We finally came to the top of a cliff and saw this.
It may be hard to see, but the middle pool is kind of a heart shape. You had to kind of scale down the side of a cliff (it wasn't actually as hard as that sounds) and then there were all these little pools. It was the neatest thing. We were the only ones there at first, so we kind of felt like explorers who had discovered something all on our own! After a while a few other people came, but we got some cool pictures of it. This was the view over the side. I mean where is water this blue?
We got the first couple who came down next to take this picture of us. That main pool was probably 10-15 feet deep.
This mountain was the view across from us at the pools. Anyone know what this is called? It is too unique looking not to have a name.
After leaving the pools we kept going around the north part of the island to find this small town that touted it had the 'Best Banana Bread on the Planet!'. There is a part on the map that our rental company gave us that says 'do not take your rental car past this point on the road'. Well, that is where we headed next. The next 2-3 miles around the mountain was a one lane, curvy road. If you could not see around the curve, you just prayed no one else was coming around at the same time. If they were you both slammed on your brakes and whoever had the widest berth would kind of back up and let the other person go. It was exciting (read terrifying) to say the least. But we got our banana bread, as well as some delicious coconut candy, and made it back to our hotel room alive. I don't know if it was the best in the world, but it was certainly tasty.
Our last day we spent shopping in Lahaina, and then took an overnight flight back to Dallas. I honestly was not sure what to expect in going to Hawaii. Maui is my in laws favorite place on the planet, and so I worried it had been built up a little too much. No chance. Maui is amazing. There is SO much to do, and see there, or you can just lay at the pool and enjoy the beautiful scenery. It is so beautiful and the food is so good and the people are friendly and I will definitely be going back one day.
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