Easy Day

We woke up fairly early since we are still on California time. We had purchased "Maui Revealed" and we read that to plan the day while eating a leisurely breakfast of last nights poki grilled with scrambled eggs. We packed up our lunch and headed out.

We drove south and stopped by Del Sol to get our free tote (we got a coupon from our hotel). I dropped Megan off while I looked for parking. By the time I found parking, she was done, so I turned around and picked her up. Del Sol was located in Whaler's Village, a cute little open air mall on the water. Megan wanted to do shopping there and said we should go back later. The free beach bag was key because it could hold our snorkel gear.

We decided to drive down to the south island because it listed some good snorkeling spots. It also said that South Maui is the super fancy area so we figured we could visit it post snorkeling. We drove down past the Four Seasons and the Grand Wailea, both amazing resorts and continued on towards our snorkeling spot. We were trying to go to a place recommended both in the book and by one of Megan's coworkers called Fishbowl. To get there, we were going to have to park and then walk a mile or so over volcanic rock and then get in to the water. Unfortunately when we got to the location of the trailhead, there were signs saying it was closed and there was a 1000 dollar fine/a year of jail time for trespassing. We drove back about a mile or so where we saw a ranger and got out to talk to him. Apparently the jerk tourists had ruined the walkway and the corral at that snorkeling spot so he suggested another place close by that was still open.

We parked, changed into our swim gear and headed down to the beach. After throwing on our gear, we walked in and swam out towards the corral. I had never been snorkeling without a wet suit before and I was happy that I didn't have to work that hard to stay afloat. It was actually way easier to float around and look at stuff then to tread water when you had to mess with your mask. I had a few issues with water getting into the breathing apparatus, but other than that nothing major. We saw a bunch of surgeon fishes, some butterfly fish and also some other fish that are less easily identified. We made a note to get an underwater camera to take pictures there.

Afterwards, we got into dry clothes and headed up a couple miles north to a sandy beach. We found a spot under a tree to get some shade, and ate our lunch. We were both super tired after snorkeling for 2 hours or so and we totally passed out for an hour. We woke up and drove up to the Grand Wailea because our Maui book told us they had good massages there. We pulled up and dropped our car with the valet and headed in to the resort. It is an amazing place. There are gardens and ponds all over and it is very open. It was actually somewhat difficult to navigate. We had to find a map off to the side which told us how to get to the spa and even then it took us another 5/10 minutes to find where we wanted to go.

We signed up for a joint massage for Friday, got our parking validated and then wandered around the grounds. There was a sweet bar over looking the beach as well as a mall off to the left of the entrance. Megan wanted to do some window shopping so we headed around there. The one jewelry store had the ugliest tackiest octopus bracelet. The thing probably weighed 5 pounds and was huge. I pointed it out to Megan to laugh at it and the sales person quickly showed us the female version. Megan said this looks pretty ... and was about to say ridiculous or tacky or disgusting or something along those lines and got cut off by the salesperson who said "I know it is done so well isn't it?" We bit our tongues and headed back to our car.

We drove back up towards our hotel and stopped at the Whalers village to walk around the shops. Megan bought some clothing and then we stopped at Hula Grill to get some drinks. We saw the end of the Cavaliers/Magic game and got some tropical drinks and a tropical fruit taster platter. Some of the fruits were ... interesting.


After hanging out for a while, it was getting close to sunset so we waited at our table for the green flash. After we didn't see it, we walked back to our car.

Along the way, Megan saw some toads out on the gold course. She LOVES toads. So of course she went about to pick them up. Toads pee themself when they are scared, but Megan has so much experience traumatizing them that she knows how to hold them so they won't pee on her. After giving a few toads heart attacks, we drove back up to our hotel. On the way back we called and made reservations for Warren and Annabelle's Magic show and for powered paragliding. We made dinner and packed our breakfast and lunches for tomorrow. The plan was to get up at 2:30 am to see the sunrise on top of the Haleakala crater so we had to get everything ready the night before.