Less Than Me

We leave for our three week vacation in Maui on Thursday and we are getting super excited! However, the thought of being disconnected from the net for three weeks was something I didn’t want to consider... So I signed up with NetZero last night. (don’t let the name fool you, I’m not getting interNET for ZERO dollars, it’s costing me $9.95) I installed the client last night, but since we have no phone line, I cannot test it out before we get there (and I’ve never even used the modem before on my laptop). I’m sure there will be multitudes of problems, but I can’t complain, I’ll be in Hawaii!

Posted by Jake at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We arrived in Maui at 2PM yesterday; completely clear skys, 85 degrees! It took us a ridiculous amount of time to get a rental car, but even though “they were out of mini-vans” we got one anyway. The condo is awesome, it’s right on the water! I’m hearing waves hit the beach while I type these words. Here are some pics from our balcony, the pink ones are from the sunrise this morning.

Posted by Jake at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Kara has a passable description of yesterday over at Spicy Princess. I’ll add a few details...

Yesterday we went grocery shopping for breakfast food, beach food, and booze. The prices are absolutely insane and we were at a regular grocery store, not a little mini-mart. I was going to get some ice cream, but the Breyer’s half gallon of Mint Chocolate Chip was $7.70 plus tax!!!

After we went shopping, my mom and sister stopped at Starbucks. I went in with them to, I guess, get an iced latte, but had to leave before we got to the front of the line. There is something SO wrong about leaving Seattle to go to Maui and then going to Starbucks!

The shops in Lahaina were standard beach shop fare, though the art galleries were entertaining. I’ve officially become a fan of surrealist painter Victor Bregda; his stuff is fascinating to look at!

We brought a handful of boardgames to entertain us during the downtimes and last night we played Carcassonne: The Castle. Kara beat me as per usual with all the Carcassonne games. Someday I’ll learn her secret and use it against her!

Today we are going to spend all day at the beach, so lots of sunscreen for my Mr. Phillip-like skin.

Posted by Jake at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I did some looking around a few days ago for the best beaches in Maui (thank you internet) and came up with Wailea Beach. We went there on Saturday morning, and played in the ocean! There were two boogie boards in our condo so we brought them along and tried them out. It’s not too hard to do and it’s pretty fun, though my ribs were a little sore in the morning, so maybe I was doing it wrong? Once we got back from the beach, we swam at our pool but it was ridiculously cold compared to the ocean, so none of us wanted to jump in. Me and Julie decided that we’d hold hands and jump in together on three. Watch what happened.

Yesterday we set off for the north side of the island to see what we could see. We were in search for another beach, but also enjoying the sights along the way. We ended up at Iao Valley where we took a bunch of pictures of pretty green hills. After that we headed to the shore to see what the beaches looked like, but they were no good for swimming. The beach was short and steep with rocks and big waves, so we made a beeline back to Wailea. The sun was behind the clouds for most of the day, but it was still warm in and out of the ocean. Thumbs up to Wailea!

Posted by Jake at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On Monday we took the Road to Hana (a scenic route with over 600 curves and 50 one-lane bridges). It was absolutely beautiful; we took an insane number of pictures of the beautiful landscape. Our first stop along the way was to hike the Waikamoi Ridge Trail where we hiked among a number of exotic trees including guava, mango, and bamboo.

Another neat stop was the village of Keanae which is located on a small peninsula. There were large waves crashing into the rocky shore which created fantastic sprays high into the air. While we were there we bought a bag of taro chips (taro is a local root used to make poi but can also be fried ala potatoes) and a fresh warm loaf of banana bread; both were delicious!

The highlight of the trip was definitely the visit to Hale o Pi’ilani Heiau, the ruins of an ancient place of worship for the native Hawaiians. We weren’t able to get super close to it, but it was still amazing to see. The surrounding grounds have been nicely maintained and all sorts of unique native plants are grown along the trail to make it even more interesting! I took a bunch of pictures of the heiau and grounds and stitched them together for an awesome panorama shot. The file is a little over 4 megs, but it’s worth the download. You can see my family on the far left walking toward the heiau, they should give you a good frame of reference of just how huge this place is.

After the heiau, we reached the town of Hana where we were finally able to eat lunch! At this point we had driven about 55 miles, but it had taken us around 4 hours due to the crazy road and all of the neat stops. After Hana, we had to decide whether to go back the way we came, or continue along the Hana Highway which would eventually loop around the rest of the eastern part of Maui. We chose the latter even though a long stretch of it would be a one-lane unpaved road. It was quite an adventure riding in our rented mini-van along the rugged trail, but it also granted us some of the most beautiful sights I’m sure any of us will ever see.

By the time we finally made it back to our condo (about 10 hours after we had left), we were all definitely ready to be out of the van! But at the same time, we also had the feeling like we had just done something very special. We had trekked around the perimeter of Mt. Haleakala and had seen numerous unforgettable sights.

Posted by Jake at 03:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday morning we swam at our pool while the sun hid behind the clouds. My mom and Julie went to get pizza for lunch and when they got back it started raining. It rained pretty much all day, so we hung out at our condo and didn’t do much (TV, books, videogames, internet, etc). When we had enough of sitting around, we decided to go to a mall and walk around. We window shopped for an hour or so and then had dinner at the food court. All during this time, there was a dance recital going on in the center of the mall so we watched a bit of that as well. It was a pretty low-key day but it was nice recoup time from all the stuff we’d done since we got here.

Posted by Jake at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

On Wednesday we tried to go to Ka‘anapali Beach, one of the alleged best beaches of Maui, but when we got there, there was no parking! We drove down the coast and finally found some parking about a mile down the way. We walked to the beach by the parking lot, but the beach kind of sucked. The ground under the water was rocky and the waves were weird and unpredictable. After a while Kara and I walked down the coast over to Ka’anapali and the beach was SO much better! The waves were really big, but we were able to get out past the breakers and just float up and down on the waves!

On Thursday we tried to return to Wailea but once again, NO PARKING! We drove down the street again and stopped at Polo Beach. I offered to run down the beach for reconnaissance before we took all of our stuff down. The beach was way too packed and it also looked rocky, so we decided to drive down the coast a bit more. We saw some cars pulled off down the road, so we stopped again and this time my dad ran to check it out. He came back with a thumb up so we brought all of our crap to the beach. This was the most fun day at the beach yet! The waves were HUGE but it stayed shallow for quite a while out. These waves would hit with such power that if you weren’t careful, they’d throw you all around! Once we got out further from the beach, we were able to float over MOST of the waves. Sometimes a super huge wave would come and would break right around where we were. I got rolled by one of those waves, and that was NOT FUN! I was tossed around like a rag doll and got salt water in my mouth and up my nose. After that mistake, I learned how to deal with these waves. When I saw one coming, I’d swim straight for it, and dive straight into it before it broke. Because of the way the water curls, I would get turned underwater and pop straight up out of the ocean behind the wave! It was weird sensation diving horizontally into a wall of water, but this technique worked really well. My dad and I went out many times that day, and I didn’t get rolled again after that first scary time!

On Friday, we decided to take a break from the beach. We had to take our snorkel gear back to Lahaina so that determined which way we were headed. We ended up going to the Whalers Village in Ka’anapali which is a shopping center surrounding a whaler museum. We all looked at shops for a while, and then the girls continued to shop while my dad and I went to check out the museum. I was surprised at how interesting the museum actually was; it described the hellish conditions of a whaler’s life and also went into detail about how they harvested each section of a whale and what each part was used for.

Posted by Jake at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday morning ate yummy breakfast and did the whole Christmas thing. I got another sweet Bionicle so take THAT Brett!! At around noon, Kara, Julie, and I decided to go to the beach. We drove to Maalaea Beach, which is right down the street from our condos, but the beach and waves were too small. So we got back in the van and drove toward Kihei until we saw a bunch of cars pulled off the side of the road. We got out and stayed at that beach for a while. I wasn’t planning on getting in the water, so I sat up on the beach in the shade and read Azkaban. There were a bunch of holes in the sand, and I soon realized that they were crab holes! If I sat still for long enough, crabs would start peeking out of their holes, which freaked the crap out of me! I couldn’t handle sitting there, so I greased myself up with suntan lotion and got in the ocean only to discover that this beach sucked too! The waves were really small and the water stayed shallow for far too long. But now that I was in the water and ready to play, I figured we might as well drive to Wailea. Thankfully we found a parking spot and were able to hang there for a few hours. While we were there, whales started breaching a couple hundred yards out from shore! We could see them popping out of the water and spraying water into the sky; it was quite amazing.

Posted by Jake at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got tired of blogging each day (as you might have noticed from the lack of entries in the last week). We’ve been spending most of our time at the beach whenever it’s sunny and most of our time at our condo whenever it’s cloudy/rainy. On the 26th we went up to Haleakala Crater which was pretty amazing to see. We were at ten thousand feet so we could see most of Maui, the mountains of the big island, and into the crater itself (which looked like a Mars landscape). Yesterday was also pretty cool because we hiked down to the Nakalele Blowhole. Kara and I took the long way down and saw some pretty neat lava rocks and water and stuff.

Well, the vaca is really winding down now... We’ve got 4 days left and the depression is starting to set in. I better get out there and enjoy the Maui clouds while I can!

Posted by Jake at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)