Monday night we landed at Kahului (OGG) on a nearly full 757 (lots of passengers). An hour after we landed, about 1/3rd of the flight was still waiting for some of their checked baggage (including us, we had retrieved only one of the two so far) and the carousel with bags on it stopped. That sickening feeling started to set in that one of our bags had been lost by United, and we got in line at the unmanned baggage claim station…
A few minutes later the United baggage guy came out to shut things down for the night and was shocked to find a line of roughly 90 passengers waiting to see him! He quickly ducked back out of reach. A few minutes later the carousel started back up, and several minutes after that the remaining bags (hundreds of them) began coming down the chute and people (including us) were happy to get our bags.
Of course, that made us late for pickup of the Alamo rental car, and that made it a very late night driving to Ka’anapali and checking into The Whaler. The Whaler had mostly shut down services for the night, but we finally staggered in and checked in and fell asleep after and I decided to cancel the planned first morning in Maui drive up Haleakala to see the sunrise.
My lovely brother, dragged me out of bed at ~3am Hawaiian time Tuesday with a concerned phone call telling me that Hurricane Flossie was headed for Hawaii and I should get home now. I told him it was 3am here and that we’d be ok, and that we were tracking the storm as it moved West and were not alarmed about it’s impact, though keeping an eye on it just in case.
Of course, our body clocks are still on East coast time… so at 3:30, unable to go back to sleep, we decided to resume the planned and scrapped trip to Haleakala to watch the sunrise from 10,023 feet (above the clouds). It was lovely, and we had fun. felt a little short of breath from the altitude, but I did not notice (though we were both tired from lack of sleep). We took lots of pictures of the descent in low-gear (will post later), and had an astonishingly good breakfast at the Kula Lodge (which visitors to Maui upcountry should consider as a place of lodging too – gorgeous place, excellent food).
We shopped Paia, Wailuku (Sig Zane at sigzane.com is awesome), and followed our noses to lunch in Kahului. Our noses took us to a place in Kahului (333 Dairy Rd) called “Maui Wowie Kava Bar & Grill” and they had a neon sign in the window that said “Da Sushi Bar” – we went inside a little confused and discovered a tacky tiki bar environment with boisterous and appreciative clients. Figured it must be good. had the best Poke (sushi-grade ahi tuna rubbed in chilli oil and sea salt with sweet onions, YUM!) and some pretty damned good sushi, and I had a chicken curry stew with rice (this is that fake curry that I came to love in Japan and it was really good). I had a “Hawaiian Screw with a Sunburn” drink and she had a kava. Kava root makes for a strange drink, she said it tasted slightly bitter and like drinking fancy mud-water… but it soothes headaches and calms the drinker. The bar would not serve both alcohol and kava to the same patron – I am not sure why not. Excellent lunch; we will likely be back for that incredible Poke.
Got back to the Whaler and discovered the garage we could not find the night before (she is my hero) and we crashed for a little siesta.
Got up to have dinner at Hula Grille for more seafood and wandered around Whaler’s village a bit.
Hurricane Flossie is impacting our trip a little… the 20 knot trade winds that are normal are occasionally gusting to 26 knots (no big deal) and the 20% chance of rain that is normal has become 40% chance of rain. Trilogy canceled our scheduled sail & snorkel excursion to Lanai and rescheduled for Friday (which impacts our planned drive to Hana), but we’re still having fun and enjoying the sun.
