Luau!

Well before the Luau comes the beginning of the day. Jacky and I started by taking a stroll down the condo's beach.I was wrong, there IS sand, and lots of volcanic rock. The sound of the waves crashing on the rocks is quite soothing. Of course, I looked for shells, of which there were very, very few. What I found were teeny tiny ones. And a part of a sea urchin. Oh well, at least I won't be bringing tons of sandy shells back to the 48. We did notice that there WASN'T a noticeable sea smell....no fishy smell, no smell of salty water, no sea gulls crying in the air. It was ...different ...The best part of the beach though were these little fiddler crabs that scuttled up sideways out of their hole in the sand. I'll try to waylay one tomorrow or the next day. My tootsies got a bit of a shock in the water also. I expected warmish water...silly me. Then I started worrying about our plans to snorkel. Brrrr! Actually my tootsies got used to the temperature pretty quick (boy Lori, you're such a whiner!). Hope the rest of my body does too!
I got all excited on our deck this morning. I saw whales!! We sat there for a good 20 minutes watching 2-3 whales playing around. They were even breaching!!!! I think there must have been a female with a couple of males competing for her. There were flukes (fins) sticking out of the water, they were periscoping (sticking their head straight up), and diving down showing their tails. One enthusiastic male slapped the water 9 times in a row with his tail before going on to another tactic. We did see a whale boat close to them watching. I hope our whale boat has good luck like that because we were a little far away on land.
Spent part of the morning deciding where we were wanting to go, and making phone calls for reservations and arrangements. Time was ticking by so we finally got out of the condo and headed to the rain forest! This is in central Maui and there's quite a bit of traffic so you don't make good time. Eventually we got to Iao Valley, or Valley of the Kings. Iao needle raises 1200 feet in the air and is quite distinctive. We went for the 0.3 mile hike up to get better views of the needle and of the valley. Beautiful! We walked along a stream which could have been in Colorado it was so similar. The only thing missing was the birds which, in the 48, tend to congregate around running water like that. Here there basically are no mammals. You won't see deer in the trees, or rabbits and squirrels under bushes, or birds flitting through the underbrush. It's beautiful in the plant life though! Huge leaves, many of which looked like our houseplants gone wild. And not just wild - like someone gave them mega doses of growth vitamins! I had my new floppy hat on but it was starting to get pretty warm. Ready to go find something to eat!

Iao Needle

Me and Jacky

Drove over to Paia where the best restaurant on Maui is - Mama's Fish Shack. Lee said it was an outstanding restaurant. When we found it, the place was quite nice. There was valet parking and walls of celebrity photos taken there. I saw Clint Eastwood, and Billy Joel. This restaurant was something else. They made up a new menu every day because the dishes offered were all swimming in the ocean less than 24 hours earlier. Ok not all, there was wild boar too. On the menu was written who caught the fish (or whatever) and where it was caught. I had Red Snapper (I can't remember the Hawaiian name for it) - absolutely delicious. It was Lee's treat, luckily; the meals ran about $50 each. O yes, my Kuau Cooler was good too and I got to add another mini umbrella to my collection  :)

A quick trip back to the Condo to get ready for our luau. We went to the Old Lahaina Luau which is a traditional Hula and feast. The meal was awesome - we watched them take the pig out of the 'imu', or underground oven (e.g. dirt).

 After the wonderful all you can eat food (I can leave the Poi but the LauLau was great) the entertainment started. We had the telling of the story of the Islands in Hula dance and story-telling. It was fascinating. I didn't get good pictures of the Hulas because it was dark. Our server told us they are full every night of every week, year round. We estimated 400-500 guests were there tonight. Just think of it!

It was a wonderful night. We really felt like we were in Hawaii. One last picture; I had a new sundress for the Luau and Jacky bought a new Hawaiian shirt for tonight. Just have to show you how great we look:

Aloha!