We're back from Maui! It feels like we've been gone forever, but at the same time, it didn't feel like nearly long enough. We took a red-eye flight out on Monday, and got in Tuesday morning. My dad was nice enough to pick us up, and we went to my parents' house to pick the dogs up. They were pretty excited to see us, although it sounded like they had a fun time playing with Harvey.
Anyways, Maui was awesome, of course. We took it easier this time than we did on our honeymoon, and just scheduled stuff for every other day instead of every day. This time we did snorkeling and horseback riding, and we were supposed to do surfing, but the surf was non-existent the day of our lesson, so we cancelled.
We went snorkeling off of Molokini this time, and took the Four Winds II out there. Great boat, with a really great crew. The captain told us he knows how to say "chicken" in like 48 languages or something. He asked me to say "chicken" in my "mother's language," and correctly identified it as Mandarin (pretty impressive, and I had to think for a second how to say the word, lol). Why chicken, I don't know.
The snorkeling was good, although I don't know if it was better than our trip to Lanai. The water was pretty choppy that day, so we got thrown around quite a bit.
We even rented some snorkeling gear and went to a few snorkeling spots around Kihei. Saw TONS of fish. We can identify a lot of them now, having been doing saltwater, so that was pretty cool. We saw a lot of humuhumunukunukuapua'as, which is the Hawaii state fish (also called Humu Humu Triggerfish). I mastered the pronunciation of it, and treated Marc to my new talent over the course of the week. He bought a t-shirt that said, "Humuhumunuku...yada yada...whatever."
But we saw pufferfish, pipefish, all sorts of tangs and triggers, butterfly fish, and had this one HUGE fish that swam by with a big fish hook stuck in its mouth. We also saw a sea turle that was hiding in the reef. At one point I saw a t-shirt that said, "Save the Yellow Tang," which I think must have been sarcasm, because we saw lots and lots of yellow tangs.
We ate lots, had great steak and great fish, and did a fair bit of shopping. We even bought a bandanna for Bandit that said, "Aloha means give me a biscuit...really!"
We also did the entire road to Hana, which we did only half of last time. We got to the Ohe'o Gulch (aka Seven Sacred Pools), which was really awesome. Even swam in the pools a bit. Then we drove the south side road, which was the bumpiest road I've ever been on.
I got lots of pictures, which of course I haven't had time to go through yet. I'm sure there's stuff I've forgotten to mention too, but I'm sure Marc will remind me. :)
Welcome back!!