Wowwee Maui: Day One

Tom and I left our apartment before the buttcrack of dawn around 4 in the morning to go to the airport, having pulled an all-nighter. We were pretty excited to get through and finally get on the plane, as you can see. Tom had a little trouble with the shaka sign so we opted for the classic thumbs up. After a stopover in SF and then another five or so hours, we arrived at the Kahului Airport, which was oddly very much outdoors.

Trying to green our trip and save money, we decided to take the Maui Bus. $1.00 a ride? How can you resist? We transferred buses at the Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, where we got our first taste of a shopping center locals actually go to. It's not too different from any other mall, save for the fresh produce stands set up in the middle of it selling lots of exotic fruits. To make me feel even more at home, there was a Ramen Ya (love the spicy egg drop ramen at the restaurant of the same name in West LA, probably not affiliated)!
Unfortunately, we really wanted to get to Lahaina ASAP so we skipped that.

The bus was an interesting experience. You get to see locals randomly bumping into each other, overhear what young people talk about (not too dissimilar from kids on the bus here, I guess, just with slightly different slang), and take note of all the scenery outside. There was lots of blues and greens. In other words, plenty of nature and not much industrialization. Much of the view was of sugarcane when we were inland.


Eventually, we caught our first glimpse of the ocean and it was amazing to say the least.


The ride took about 1.5 hours total, not including the wait time at the mall. We were so hungry by this point, since we hadn't eaten anything since before our flight so we ate at the closest place to the bus stop, the Cool Cat Cafe at Wharf Cinema Center. It's a great place with an outdoor deck full of 50s memorabilia that serves awesome organic burgers and, best of all, they supplied us with our first delicious tropical drinks at 1 in the afternoon.


After eating and drinking, it was off to our hotel! It was actually a lot closer than I thought, which was great, because it was so humid that if it were any further I'd probably pass out. We stayed at the Lahaina Inn, which was alright but we probably wouldn't do it again. More on that in a later post. When we got there, we actually did end up passing out. What was supposed to be a "quick nap" turned into a three-hour one. Too late to really do anything else, we just decided to find a beach to watch the sunset at...where we met this guy.

We were innocently sitting and enjoying the beach when all of a sudden sand was flung in Tom's direction. We looked over and there was an angry little crab guy. I guess we were intruding. Eventually he ran back into his little hole but we were paranoid now that he would come back and pinch. In reality, he was probably more scared of us than we were of him.




When the sun set, it was just so gorgeous. Over time, we came to realize it was sort of a ritual to watch it for a lot of people who lived around there. There was a house that we sat in front of that had Hawaiian music playing as its inhabitants sat on the balcony, talked and watched the sun go down. Sitting a few yards away from us, there was a man with a guitar singing songs about the sun. I like to think that he was the guy singing it to rest. It was just kind of surreal, so much so that we started taking pictures like this:


We really enjoyed making it look fake, maybe a little too much.

Tom and I did not really have much planned so I cracked open the Lonely Planet guide for Maui that I got from my local library. It's a very awesome guide, might I add. I highly recommend it. I tried using the Unofficial Guide to Maui but I just did not like the format at all and it was a little annoying to navigate through. The Lonely Planet Guide was organized by region and included itineraries! It even has a section about keeping your trip green! AH! Anyway, so I looked in the book to see what was around to eat. We headed in the opposite direction of where we came from and after a short trip to the Lahaina Cannery Mall, which used to be an actual cannery for fish, we got our eats on at Aloha Mixed Plate.

Despite the look on my face, this restaurant is actually very good and attracts local people. They specialize in plate lunches, which originated from farm laborers of different cultural backgrounds bringing food and sharing with each other during lunch time. My favorite thing there was the teriyaki beef, but the lau lau is really good too. we had our first taste of poi that night and did not know what to do with it. I tasted it and was pretty grossed out because of the texture and it had a weird tartness to it, but later in the trip we realized you're supposed to put it on the kalua pork, and you don't notice that tangy taste anymore. But that particular night, after tasting it, we put the cap back on and did not touch it again. We, of course, had more tropical drinks. That was the place I first discovered the Lava Flow. Yummmm. I really liked Aloha Mixed Plate, especially with it's fun patio decked out in blue Christmas lights and umbrellers. They also have a really good happy hour from 2 to 6!

We were sooo stuffed after that and definitely needed the stroll home to work off the meal a bit. It was nice that we were able to start recognizing things and we managed to get back to our hotel with no problem. Tom was so exhausted at that point that he fell asleep in his rocking chair on the lanai of our hotel room!


Check out the rest of the pics here!