As Erci already wrote, the last full day on Maui was spent driving the beautiful road to Hana and back. We swam briefly at Koku beach at the extreme Eastern end of Maui and checked out the Hasegawa general store in Hana. Erci was wishing she had the Porsche on the road back; I am kind of glad we did not have a sportier car. We have a lot of photos. Once back in Ka’anapali we jumped into the ocean again to cool off, and it occurred to me that in one afternoon we’d swum both ends of Maui, thanks to modern transportation. Less than a century ago that would have been two or three days travel at least.
More after the fold…
On the way to Hana the views of Haleakala were spectacular and completely clear of clouds for the first time this trip.
We had a casual dinner at Leilani’s in Whaler’s Village, which was vastly better than it’s sister restaurant, Hula grille. More seafood and it was good. We packed to check out on Monday.
Monday morning we checked out of the Whaler, returned the rented Sebring convertible, and flew Aloha airlines over to Honolulu where we were greeted with leis, and Ilima Tours picked us up and transferred us to the Ocean Resort Hotel in Waikiki. Ilima was awesome. Ocean resort had rooms open early, which was nice, and we dropped off bags in our dingy room and headed over to the Waikiki Aquarium before it closed, stopping briefly at the Marriott next door for lunch.
Waikiki Aquarium is vastly better than it was in the mid 1980s, and has some of the most gorgeous and healthy captive reef corals I have ever seen. They are doing a lot of work to repair reef damage and preserve the local marine environment and educate visitors on how to tread lightly on the earth. Where I used to not list the Waikiki Aquarium in a top 50 things to do on Oahu, I have to adjust that now and place it firmly in the top 10 now.
We walked back through Kapiolani park slowly, decided to skip the zoo and headed back to the hotel. Once we were confronted with the room again, and half-way through stripping to get into swimsuits and visit the pool to cool off, the room’s state finally hit us and I’ve done something I never thought I’d do. I got snooty and decided we were not staying there a single night. The straw that broke the camel’s back is that after seeing that the room had not been thoroughly cleaned, let alone redecorated since about 1968, and that the room rates on the back of the door were still astronomical, we discovered that local phone calls were a 75 cent charge per call. I snapped. We packed up, dressed, called Marriott on my cell phone and checked out of the slimy, over-priced, and falsely advertised Ocean Resort (Castle properties will hear more later), and checked into the beautiful, clean, and sensible Marriott right around the corner. Neither hotel was surprised at all by our move, which is somewhat telling.
The Marriott has a gorgeous lobby, and Dan would love the orchids here… hundreds and hundreds of them of several different types. Marriott took a little pity on us and for a “city view” rate (their cheapest) they claimed they had no king sized beds (which is our standard request at Marriott hotels) and bumped us up to an Executive Suite with a gorgeous view of Waikiki and Kalakaua Avenue that does have a king sized bed. Marriott rocks.
We took a quick swim in the pool and then napped by the pool to relax a little, then changed for sushi at Sansei where we had more and different poke, and very good sushi. Erci had Chu-Hai (Shochu and Grapefruit juice) and I had a Saki sampler and decided to get more Kokuryu “500 Mangoku” (aka: Black Dragon) Saki which was delicious.
We are both enjoying the Jim Butcher “Dresden Files” books.
I have had too much pineapple… it does have side-effects if you overdo it…. oops!
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