June 24, 2018 - arrival on Maui

Intro:
With my past vacations my travel journal has been published in real-time - or at least, as close to next-day-real-time as internet connections would allow.  For my 2018 trip, however, I felt less inclined to spend time in front of screens.  It was my first trip to Maui, so the combination of soaking in the new adventures all day plus the tiring effects of the heat and humidity left my brain too mushy to write coherently by the evening time.  I was also experimenting with a new creative outlet (to pull myself out of phone/camera screens) and sketching impressions of my surroundings daily, which I hoped to include in my travel journal in a higher quality manner than just cell phone snapshots of the pages.  This was also my first trip with an increased emphasis on film photography, which (for obvious logistical reasons) cannot be included in the blog real-time.
Of course, I've shot film on past adventures and always *meant* to come back to the blog to update the pages with film images, however I have yet to achieve that particular goal.
But I digress...
Having not managed to cobble together a full post by day 3 of my trip, I made the determination that I would take notes during the trip, then fill in the details - complete with film photos! - upon arriving home.
It was a grand ambition which I *meant* to do last summer, and then other projects beat their way to the front of the line, and here I am... gearing up for another trip while realizing that my last trip has yet to be properly chronicled.
To that end,  I've made this blog a priority to complete.  Our 2018 trip was our first time island hopping - we began our trip on the island of Maui, which was new to us so we spent a majority of the trip there, then took a short flight to Kauai to spend a few days at our condo in Kapa'a.  Packing for this trip turned out to be a bit confounding, as we have storage cupboards in our condo on Kauai but we were traveling to Maui first, and so would not have access to our beach supplies for the first (and longer) leg of the trip.  In the end, we decided to concentrate on what we would need for Maui and let the Kauai stuff just be ready and waiting for us.  This approach mostly worked out, except that D and I both forgot one crucial element.



Sunday June 24th, 2018

My bookshelf near my bed, finally done packing on June 23rd.

Our jet lag on this trip has been comical.  This is the first time we've flown to the islands in the daylight, and I believe that has a lot to do with our internal clocks being rigidly set to mainland time.  After waking at home at 5:45 a.m., we showered, locked up, caught our shuttle to the airport, checked our bags, and made our way through airport security with an hour and a half to spare.  (I was surprised that my unusual camera gear did not raise any questions through TSA... I suspect it would have been a different story if I used my lead-lined film bag)

Breakfast in the airport was... bad.  Coffee was... warm.

As passengers boarded, our luggage rode conveyor belts into the belly of the airplane.

We passed the time on the 6 hour flight alternating between eating snacks and watching movies, landing at roughly 1:50 p.m. Island Time.

I was very happy to see land after such a long flight over the ocean.

My stomach felt it was 4:50 p.m., and we should have been preparing for dinner.

We gathered our checked bags and searched for the rental car location.  Being in an unfamiliar airport, we were disoriented at first, but eventually discovered the kiosk where we waited for a shuttle to take us to the rental car lot.  G and I stayed with the luggage while D signed us in, and after a short 5 minute wait we were introduced to our Jeep for the week.

Our route to the condo took us south through the valley of Maui and then north along the west coast.

The island is made of two mountains connected by a low valley

We spotted a fruit stand on the side of the highway and quickly pulled over to investigate.

Mangoes and papayas in season - had I realized Hawaiian papayas are better than what we have on the mainland, I would have picked some up.  

G and D enjoying snack time

After sampling a few items, we picked up some fruit and coconut snacks and continued up the highway to The Whaler on Kaanapali Beach.

The Whaler resort is a two tower collection of studio-two bedroom condos located directly on Kaanapali Beach.  The grounds between the two towers house a swimming pool, fountains, a large koi pond, and tropical landscaping.  We stayed in unit 751, a one bedroom two bath unit located on the 7th floor at the very end of the tower overlooking the ocean.

Our floorplan was "D", the staircase was at the end of the building facing the ocean, so the kitchen window and large sliding glass door of the living room faced directly towards the ocean.  The lanai wrapped around the side of the building to the sliding glass door off our bedroom.  The living room had a pull-out couch where Gayle slept.

Our room was in the tower on the right, 7th floor.  The low buildings to the right are the Whaler's Cove shopping center.

We were greeted by exceptionally friendly concierge with shell leis, and led to our ocean front room in tower 2 of the resort.  We spent a little time unpacking and settling in, then - with all of our mainland-stomachs growling intensely, we walked to the restaurant next door - The Hula Grill - for dinner.  We shared an appetizer of kobachu hummus (which I didn't photograph) and I had the two fish dinner special - seared ahi and grilled ono with jasmine rice in a black bean sauce.

The path leading to the Hula Grill from the beach

Mai Tai

Dinner was excellent, and more than made up for the poor breakfast.

The Whaler resort is located directly adjacent to the Whaler's Cove shopping center, which made it very convenient to shop and pick up snacks for the room.  After dinner we stopped through the ABC store for coffee, creamer, and more sunblock.

Upon returning to our room, I unpacked our small bag of groceries and by that time I was ready to drop.  We opened the side door to listen to the live music wafting up from the restaurant next door, which was being slightly drowned out by the sound of the waves washing ashore.  As I began to drift off to sleep, D tapped my shoulder and said... "What time does it feel like?"

"I don't know," I replied, "it's probably 11 by now, right?"

It was 8:00 p.m., and we were all exhausted and ready to sleep.

Later in the night, I heard D laugh... he'd woken up thinking it must be 3 or 4 am.. and it was only 10:30.

Over the last 4 months or so, my body clock became accustom to sleeping from roughly 11:00 p.m. to 5:45 a.m., so when I woke feeling like it might be about time to get up, I checked the clock...

2:22 a.m.

D, who sleeps much less than I do on a regular basis, was by that time done with the night.  I found him out on the balcony propped up on a lounge chair overlooking the ocean.  I stepped out to look at the moonlight's reflection on the water for a few moments and then decided to try to get a little more sleep.  As I had snuggled back under the covers my mind pondered the purchases we'd just made, wondering if we had forgotten anything, then a flash of realization came to me...

I forgot to pack the keys for our storage cupboards on Kauai.

We have two sets of keys, on two key rings - one for each of us just in case one of us loses them in transit.  If I didn't have my keys, chances were extremely high that D also didn't pack his.

How did we forget the only way to get to our own stuff on Kauai?  I remembered the keys six months prior, when we made the reservations for the trip, then concentrated so much on Maui that the concept of needing keys for anything totally slipped my mind.  I bolted out of bed and ran back onto the balcony, breathlessly asking (with very little hope) if D had, by any chance, packed the keys?

"You mean, you didn't pack them?" was his response.

The worst part is that I know I opened the drawer where those keys are kept about 4 times on our last day in the house, my eyes must have passed over them each time, and it just never dawned on me to grab the keys.

The sense of doom settled in, then quickly shifted to calculating how to deal with this hurdle.  We'd had to have the locks drilled and replaced by a locksmith when we first took possession of the condo, I supposed we'd just have to incur that expense (in both money and time) again.

It was now around 3 a.m., so I crawled back into bed, and as I laid down I joked, "we should just have your brother fed-ex the keys to us."

Then I sat up in bed.

"WE SHOULD HAVE YOUR BROTHER FED-EX THEM TO US!  We just got here!  Do they overnight to Hawaii...."... I grabbed my phone and did a quick query...   "THEY DO!  WE'RE SAVED!"

There would be a fee involved, but far less than that of a locksmith, and only a few minutes of time to retrieve the package from the front desk.  Thus ended our arrival day on the island.