Last Day on Maui

Today was sadly our last day on Maui. We had an 11:30 flight and a week of accumulated things to clean up in the hotel room, so we got an early start. After unscrewing the fins from our board and rolling up the kites, we packed and then repacked all the other junk. After stopping at Safeway and the gas station, we returned the rental car and were sucked backed to reality by the typically efficient airport staff. After waiting in line and finally getting to the head of the line, the counter lady informed us that we needed to go back to the agricultural x-ray scanner, and then come back to the end of the line. Of course, there were no signs anywhere, and everyone else had to do the same thing! ATA had overbooked on this flight (as had been the case for our other flight), so they were offering $300 vouchers for volunteers, which we signed up for. It still meant checking in and going to the gate, however. Along the way, the brilliant TSA people refused to hand check my film, and we ran into *another* x-ray machine, this time an outgoing agricultural check... which meant that Chloe and I had to eat most of the apple-bananas and ice cream" bananas we had bought yesterday at the swap meet. I felt slightly ill after eating three bananas. We pressed on, not knowing whether we wanted another night on Maui and free ticket vouchers, or to go back home. In the end, because of a clerical snafu on the part of ATA, we got onto the originally scheduled flight.


This was the first time we had used a package deal (hotel+flight+car) and I think I would probably do it again, especially since seasoned hawaiigoers tell me that the flight+hotel can sometimes be cheaper than just the flight!


As we took off westward, we looked down and saw the wakes of kiteboarders on kite and canoe beach below. Dave was probably down there, but I couldn't pick out his kite.

last FULL day on Maui

We had read about the Maui swap meet in our lonely planet guide so we headed out around 7:45 to go check it out and meet up with Sandy. Although a lot of the things on sale were the typical made-in-china-commodity-vacation-items, there were some nice shirts there, some beautiful but expensive hand made wood bowls, and a huge selection of organic fruit and nuts.





There was also an excellent food stand where we bought teriyaki chicken/ garlic noodle bowls and bento for later on in the day. We also picked up a book for the plane (Moneyball by Michael lewis for $6), some cool fish-shaped drawer handles,



some organic macadamia nuts and bananas. Chloe had by this time become obsessed by a variety of banana known as an "apple-banana" which has hints if apple in it. However, it seems like you need to find them when they are quite ripe, or they just taste like somewhat bitter normal bananas. There were several stands at the swap meet with ripe apple bananas, as well as another varierty which we hadn't seen before called an "ice cream banana" which had notes of vanilla and just the slightest wispy hint of banana (I'm practicing for a new career writing tasting notes for esoteric banana varietals). We ran into Sandy, who was buying t-shirts and steadily moving down and crossing names off her gift list.

From the swap meet, we headed out to Kite Beach again, where the wind was light and I rigged my 12 meter switchblade. It was fine in the zone near the beach ("the inside"), but within ten minutes I was way overpowered on the outside and came back in to rig chloe's 8 meter GK sonic. With the sonic and my new (used) underground FLX I had one of my best kiting days ever, in two one hour sessions.

I got a little air (mostly off of waves, but some on turns near shore), stayed upwind effortlessly, and more importantly managed to ride some waves in. It seems to take very careful control of your speed, but the sensation is pretty amazing. At some point I'm going to have to buy a directional surfboard style board. The problems that I had riding the waves were that for the big ones the wave would push me forward, slacken my lines and occasioanlly dump the kite... and I would all of a sudden be in the midst of a set of shoulder height waves and whitewash and get a pounding. Anyway, it was bliss (the riding, not the washing machine of the whitewash!), which was only slightly spoiled by my getting too greedy later on in the day and trying to launch in light winds. This led to getting dragged alon the beach, dumping chloes kite into a huge bush (sorry Chloe!!) and getting heckled by an overweight local who doesn't even seem to kiteboard. Chloe took a short lesson with a mini-kite on short lines and felt a lot better by the end. Dave had previously gotten his 11 m Yarga re-fitted with a fifth line bar, and had gone out on the water but was a little too lit on his 11 (most people were on 9 m kites) and ended up down the beach with tangled lines. Here he is walking back up the beach:

I could feel his pain after having my kite fall out of the sky on my last session near shore and having to detangle a huge birds nest of lines earlier.

When the wind was dead near shore and after a few more attempts to launch, we called it a day and headed back to Kihei to clean up. Dave and Sandy had invited us over to share some teriyaki ribs that they were grilling, so we headed over there after washing as much of the by now usual waterproof sunscreen/sand mixture off as we could. The ribs were great but we were sad to say goodbye to Dave, Sandy and Dylan. Hopefully they will visit us out in CA.

Kahakuloa, Lahaina, "Secret Beach"

We decided to drive around west Maui today, heading up through Wailuku and the small road that takes you through Kahakuloa to Honokohau.


Along the way we passed through some stunning scenery and I took a few film shots which will hopefully turn out okay. We stopped at the famous "Julia's banana bread" -- a wooden cabana perched over terraced Taro fields, bought some coconut candy and banana bread, and continued north.



Someone had told us that today would be the day for big waves, so we hiked down the cliffs to watch the sets roll in and crash onto the rocks below.


As soon as the road becomes two lanes again, the drive becomes pretty uninteresting. The northwest of the island had been turned into a southern california in the middle of the Pacific, complete with suburban condo sprawl and acres of gold courses impinging into the forest. Things seem to get interesting again as you get to Lahaina, which although touristy has some lovely old streets and a huge Banyan tree (the biggest in the US supposedly) in a square right on the ocean.


From Lahaina, we headed right for Kite beach again, but shortly after arriving there exploded one of the struts on chloes kite, so after some curmudgeonry on my part we headed back to the hotel and decided to take a last walk out to out beloved "Secret Beach" off the Hoapili trail near La Perouse bay. It was already 3:20 by the time we got to the trail head, so we walked quickly over the crunchy lava and got to the beach in 40 minutes. In contrast to last time, when it felt like we were in Death Valley, a huge storm cloud had moved over us and drenched us in a warm rain this time. On a whim, I decided to try to grab a coconut from the coconut tree near the beach (it really IS an oasis!), which took a fair bit of twisting and nudging to get loose. We had tried throwing rocks at it, but after seeing how well connected they are to the tree, I think I can say the would have been there for a few weeks throwin little chincks of lava at it with no progress. Anyway, I got the coconut down, which we sat on an old coral head on the beach and whacked with a lava chunk until a section of the husk had been removed, and then used a small pointy lava rock to break a drinking hole in the innner shell.



The coconut milk was excellent, as was the white rind.


What more could you ask for -- coconuts on a secluded beach in 80 degree weather in the middle of winter. After swimming for a while, I took some photos (many of which with the #$%# lenscap on)



and we headed back along the hoapili trail.






Later that night, we ate at "Da Kitchen" and Chloe dropped off the kite to be repaired by a local named Karen.

Winds up!

The wind finally returned with a vengeance today (there had been no wind since we got here). We met Dave at Canoe beach and rigged the Switchblade 12, but the kite was far too big for the conditions and the wind was directly onshore = a recipe for disaster, so I pulled the plug and we waited for the wind to change direction. This happened soon enough, and I got my first chance to try out my new used FLX board, which in combination with chloes 8M sonic just floated upwind with no problem at all. I had a great session, and then we took turns launching and landing eachother. Chloe and Dave each got up on the board and also had a few painful looking "ragd olls" where they got launched into the air and then unceremoniously plunked head first into the water. I was very happy to have got in enough days earlier this year to be (for the most part) done with that stage!!

me:




dave:


The only hiccup was when I crashed hard, breaking my board leash. I body dragged upwind as fast as I could, but couldn't get to the board fast enough. Later on I saw a lot of people just let go of the bar and swim hard for the board which looks like it works better. Thankfully, Jesse Richman was there to grab the board and very nicely brought it to shore.

shopping. film, Pai'a, Makena

Today I bought some really nice board shorts at Tropix. On our way back to the hotel we stopped in Kihei and got some fresh cocunut juice and apple bananas from a small store.

I hadn't known that the little brown coconuts you usually see in stores is actually just the middlemost part of the coconut. The majority of the bulk is the fibrous husk.



We also bought a little plush turtle for my mom.

From there, we met up with Daves mom, Sandy, Dylan and Dave at Big Beach and hung out, built sand castles, snorkeled and boogy boarded. After having fish tacos at the JAWZ taco truck parked near the Big Beach lot, we continued shopping. I got a shirt at the Pacific Whale foundation, and we looked around Pai'a at some of the stores. We were actually on a mission to find medium format film, which is pretty hard to find on Maui -- at least it was for me! We finally found some velvia 100F (I didnt notice that it was F -- arghhh) at the Lighthaus in Kahaluhi, which stopped the shakes and other withdrawal symptoms I was experiencing at having only 3 exposures of velvia film left.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach in front of our hotel



and then headed off to Mamas Fish house with Dave and Sandy where we had excellent crab cakes, ahi sashimi and macadamia nut encrusted mahi-mahi stuffed with crab and lobster. I could barely move after the meal.

Snorkeling Molokini and Lana'i

We had arranged for a snorkeling tour of Molokini and Lana'i today, so we got up early and headed out to Ma'alaea bay to the Pacific Whale Foundation. It was a calm day and the ride out to Molokini went fine for Chloe and me. I was a little worried since both of us are a little prone to seasickness.

We arrived at Molokini -- a submerged crater with abundant marine life and jumped in the water, taking in the colors of all the cool fish with unpronounceable names -- humuhumunukunukuyamalangadingdong anyone?



About twenty minutes into the swim, I started feeling a little queasy and headed back to the boat. I should explain that my experience on boats is generally not good. The last time I was on a boat for a full day was in junior high school, when my dad had the misguided idea to go out on a fishing boat at 5 in the morning to catch salmon. We both ended up being sick for the entire eight hour trip and I vowed never to do anything like that again. However, vows are easily forgotten after eighteen years, and it was time for a refresher course. In the time since then, I took skin diving class at UC berkeley and did fine until the swell picked up on a dive near Fort Ross, and the combination of the moving sea and the kelp waving slowly in opposite directions made me turn green and then throw up in the water. The good news was that whatever I had eaten for breakfast seemed to attract the fish. It was a miserable day which had started out with the humiliation of having to wear a womens wet suit because I was so skinny. I must have been a sorry sight -- a pale skinny teenage boy with boob flaps dragging himself out of the water on his stomach. Well, as I said I had clearly forgotten about both of these experiences, so what could be better than combining two activities which had each made me extremely sick in the past? They would probably cancel eachother out right? Well ... no. I sat very still on the boat, and kept my eyes fixed on Maui as the captain informed us that we would be heading out into the "open ocean" for the 25 mile crossing to Lana'i soon. As people filtered back on the boat, word spread that some jellyfish had stung a few people and we saw some of the nasty looking red welts.

Along the 25 mile crossing we saw some humpback whales and although I didn't see it myself, other people saw a few of them breach. I was concentrating on the horizon, however. A pod of bottle nosed dolphins were swimming with the whales, which was also cool to see.

Right as we entered the bay, a pod of spinner dolphins surrounded the boat, and we watched them surf around and jump out of the water.


By the time we got to the dive site I was feeling a lot better so I headed into the water with Chloe and we swam around for a while. I cut things short when I started feeling ill again, and clambered back onto the boat. Big swell started coming in a few minutes later and I began to feel very poorly indeed. Chloe came back on the boat around ten minutes later to find a slightly pale husband staring out at the horizon, a half eaten hamburgr on his lap, who was refusing to even talk. Finally the critical point came when I realized that I wasn't going to get out of this trip without throwing up , so I ran downstairs, elbowed my way into the bathroom, and didn't even manage to close the door before things got messy. It's probably in bad taste to go into much more detail but I'll just say two words: "Projectile" and "Vomit". Oh and also that I had eaten fruit for breakfast. I felt much better afterwards, but was faced with the daunting task of wiping down the now orange bathroom and cursing their low-flow toilet system. Despite it being messy and disgusting, I really felt worlds better afterwards and was fine on the 20 mile trip back to port. Right before maneuvering back into the slip we saw some huge sea turtles in the water. So there you have it -- no more boats or snorkeling for me!

From port, chloe and I headed out to Kite Beach to scope things out, but it was completely dead. Some locals filled us in on the intricacies of the launch. Over all it looks like a beautiful beach though.

On the way back to Kihei we stopped at Neil Pryde, and then Ichiban Okazuya. Ichiban is a humble storefront with really great fish plates.

We had the teriyaki Ahi with gobo root and talked to the chef for a while before heading back to the hotel to eat our fish on the beach.

xmas day

We hadn't really counted on everything being closed today, so our brief visits to Pai'a, Makawao and Kula were a bit dull. Since we were in the area though, we decided to head up to the Haleakala crater. After a whole lot of switchbacks, but hardly any traffic, our Cobalt made it to the visitor center. We were able to use our National Parks pass again to get in, and tried to figure out how much money it has saved us over the last year but could only really be sure of around $60 or so. We'll definitely be buying another one in January! When we got to the top


we saw that a few truckloads of horses had been driven up, but we weren't able to get past them in time, and ended up inhaling a pungent mixture of volcanic dust and horse turds as we walked down the Sliding Sands trail behind them. At least it made for some nice pictures


We walked about 3/4 of a mile down the trail, then turned around since we were starting to get hungry. After a brief stop at the true summit (10029 ft)



where we ran into some guys who were about to mountain bike down from Ulaula overlook, we headed back down the mountain. Unfortunately, the place thaat we wanted to eat at for lunch (Ichiban something or other) was closed, and the only place that we could find that was still open was a kind of nasty Chinese restaurant. By that point though we were much to hungry to care. I had forgotten to charge the GPS, so we were also a bit lost for a large part of the day.

The GPS -- a Garmin Nuvi given to us by my parents -- is really a fantastic tool for anyone who travels. It makes finding places very easy of course, but the interface is really a joy to use, and it has a lot of very useful extra features... for example, it can tell you where the nearest gas station/restaurant/hotel/interesting place is, it has a multilingual phrase book, a currency and unit converter and on and on. I'm really looking forward to using it on our next road trip.

Dave and Sandy had invited us over for Christmas dinner with Daves family, which was really nice, and something I hadn't really thought of when we booked this vacation. I didn't grow up in a religious family, and it's maybe a little strange that a jewish/japanese family makes a christmas dinner, but we would have missed it! It was great, and Chloe and I were both really thankful that they had invited us.

secret beach

We headed out past La Perouse bay and walked along the Hoapili trail through the lava beds.


where it was really hot. Along the way we saw whale spouts and at least two whales surfacing

heres a blow up:

which was really cool. I subsequently read in a National Geographic article that for every whale you see at the surface in that channel (a protected area for the whales), there are many, many more nearby but deeper underwater.

The path was a little hard on the feet, and ended up in a few rocky bays where people had taken their 4x4s on impressively bad roads and camped out. There really wasn't much in the way of nice beaches though, and Chloe and I settled on a narrow spit of lava and padded out over the lava stone and coral pebbles into the water to watch crabs scuttle around on the sides of the lava flow. We ate the turkey sandwiches that we had made and then started back on the trail. Shortly after the trail started, we noticed a path which led to a remote swathe of green which in turn led to what looked like a rocky cove, so we followed the trail down to the water. A beautiful sandy and secluded beach awaited us


which appeared to have been settled at some point, so we were careful to stay away from the old walls. The waves reflect off the lava peninsula at the right, so some very strange waves come through the cove, but it made for a cool and exciting (you always had to look around to make sure you weren't about to get clocked in the side of the head by an errant wave) swim. While I was relaxing and looking out over the water I saw a whale breach and then come crashing down into the water. We subsequently saw four more breaches, but only managed o catch the splash of one on film

I think most people have seen photos of whales breaching, but it is one of those experiences that is hard to convey in pictures or in print. They really are spectacular animals, and it made our chance "discovery" of the beach that much more special. The only time I had seen whales in the wild before was from the cliffs of torrey pines park in San Diego, and they were definitely not breaching!

We headed back to the hotel after we ran out of water and caught up with Dave and Sandy for a while, who had been in the area (Wailea) shopping.

woooooo hoooo maui!

Off to Maui today!! It was an easy flight in and thankfully we did not have to deal with the Southwest line at OAKland airport. It stretched out of the terminal and wrapped two complete lengths of terminal 2. ATA by contrast was an easy check in, and we arrived on time in Maui, got the rental car (a Chevy Cobalt -- HORRIBLE), checked into the hotel and grabbed an excellent dinner of Ono and Mahi-mahi fish and chips at Alexanders.

chocolate

Well, I'm a little behind in posting to the blog, and I won't have a chance to catch up until we get back from Maui in January, but in the mean time you might be interested in checking out this long but excellent article about the Noka chocolate company. My friend Jose sent it to me and I just finished reading it over lunch. It reveals that Noka are quite deceptive about how they actually make their chocolate. The fact that they are ridiculously overpriced is obvious, but I think some people would be surprised to learn that they essentially just buy French chocolate, melt it down, pour it into molds and mark it up 2500% (853/pound NOKA price, 34.3/pound RETAIL for a Bonnat bar -- wholesale would be much less).

Bonnat is based in Voiron and is a short train or car ride from Grenoble and it was in Grenoble that I first learned of single-origin chocolates. I have tasted at least five different varieties from both Valrhona (based near Lyon) and Bonnat and loved all of them.

lolo vists

Our friend from Grenoble, who is currently doing a postdoc at Yale came up to visit. We went up to Alta to try to find some snowkiting, but couldnt really find much, so we put lolo to work.


and then grabbed an xmas tree