Maui

We love our friends Pat and Kazumi, and we enjoyed every event that was held in their honour. But once our whirlwind tour of Oahu for wedding-related activities ended, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. We could now slow down the pace and feel like we were all actually on vacation. Pat and Kazumi would stay on Oahu while Matt and I, and Joe and Clare, would move on to explore Maui. Pat and Kazumi would join us a few days later.

We spent our final day on Oahu taking it easy. We returned to Snappers for a late breakfast. After breakfast, we finished packing our things and checked out of our hotel. We had a leisurely lunch at Ala Moana Center and then made our final preparations to fly to Maui.

For this part of the trip, we made very different choices. We had chosen different airlines with different routes and different hotels. Despite all that, we would still be spending a lot of time together. There was a free shuttle that linked our area to theirs. There was also a well-marked foot path between the two locations. Fantastic!

Our flight to Maui was with Mokulele Airlines. They weighed our checked luggage, and then they weighed us and our carry-on luggage. We were asked to hop up on the baggage scale, one at a time, and they recorded our weights. The TSA screening agent chatted with Matt while he was going through security. The agent recognized the Dainese logo on Matt's t-shirt and cap. Yes, the agent was a rider. =) We boarded a small aircraft with a 10 passenger capacity. It felt more like we were joining a small tour group for a tour of the islands! The scenery was stunning as we took off from Oahu. The flight itself was about 40 minutes in duration. We arrived at our accommodations after a short cab ride and unpacked a little. Once we were settled in, we took a stroll along the marked path towards Joe and Clare's. We walked around Whalers Village, a nearby shopping centre and waited for them to arrive.  We eventually met up and had dinner at Leilani's on the Beach. We discussed our plans for the next few days until Pat and Kazumi would join us again, and then parted for the evening.

The next day, we all spent time doing some much needed laundry. Then, Joe and Clare headed to our area to join us for breakfast at Castaway Café. We had decided the night before that we would spend the rest of the day being lazy and having some much deserved beach time. Despite the fact that we had been to a beach wedding and we were in the vicinity of Honolulu's Waikiki Beach every day while we were on Oahu, we had somehow managed to be too busy to spend any time enjoying any beaches! Well we would certainly indulge in the amazing weather, sand and surf now! We packed up some items to spend a day at the beach and then set out for Joe and Clare's area. We settled ourselves on the beach. We soaked up some sun, we bobbed around in the ocean, and we had a great time. We eventually packed up and freshened ourselves up. We decided to try a restaurant called Star Noodle for an early dinner. The restaurant's dishes were quite tasty and reasonably priced. After dinner, we went for coffee. Going for coffee, as it turned out, was far more difficult than we had anticipated. We had forgotten to take into account that the U.S. celebrates Columbus Day (or Discoverer's Day) on the same day that we normally celebrate Thanksgiving. After a frustrating exercise of driving around in circles, we eventually found an open coffee shop and indulged in some caffeinated beverages. Tomorrow's adventures will involve more driving. A lot more.