Hawaii Trip- Day 5, Maui

This was Friday, Dec. 10th. The day we were leaving the familiar and entering the unknown, but we were pretty excited.

I don't remember what we had for breakfast (if anything). It had begun raining the afternoon before, and it was still raining. A big storm was blowing through the islands. But our flight was still scheduled to leave on time, so away we went.

We checked out of our hotel in the morning, and made our way to return the rental car return. That all went quite smoothly. We had a short wait for our inter-island flight. The total time between islands, including take-off and landing was less than an hour.

It was raining on Maui when we landed. The sky was very gray. No pockets of blue sky anywhere. We picked up our rental car, and started to make our way to Kihei (pronounced key-hay), where our hotel was. It was lunch time, but we thought we'd see if they would let us check in early.

During our drive, the windshield wipers kept hitting each other as they were on. Luckily it wasn't raining too hard, so I only used them when I had to.

We got to our hotel (kind of dumpy), but couldn't check in early. We'd have to wait till after 3pm. So we got some recommendations for where to go for lunch. Once in the car, it was raining a little harder, so I had to put the wipers on. It looked like one wiper blade might be sliding out, so I hopped out to see if I could slide it back in. Nope, it wouldn't budge. So I got back in and turned the wipers back on, and they got all caught up on each other and bent all out of whack... oh, no! So, it was back to the rental yard we went. Of course, it's raining much harder now, so it's much harder to see. My stress is bringing my temperature up and now the windows are fogging up. Anna called Avis to tell them what happened and to have a car ready for us. We got back, and after a little confusion from the car return person, we had a new car rented to us.

Here we are switching from the mint green Ford Focus (Economy class) to the Pontiac G6 (mid size class). They upgraded us for free. We got pretty wet. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, our suitcase was soaked when we got it from the baggage claim. It was definitely on top as they loaded the baggage on the plane. Luckily it had a plastic lining, otherwise we would have been really ticked.


So, now we have are new car, and we've made our way back to Kihei to find a place to eat a late lunch. Mary was the concierge at our hotel, and one of the places she recommended was called, "Cafe O'lei". It was close by, so we went there. The food was pretty good. The price was a little high, but all in all, it was good. It's on the second floor.

After lunch, we could check into the hotel. The first item on business was laundry! We brought enough clothes for half the trip, so laundry was on the list of priorities this day. Luckily(?), there was a laundry room at the hotel. You can see it below.

It didn't look pretty, but at least the machines worked. It seemed like it took forever for them to wash and dry. It kept raining. Anna spent some time at the front desk to talk to Mary about ideas for the next couple days.

Once laundry was done and folded. We started making dinner plans. We drove out to a restaurant a little further south from Kihei, but they had a private party that night. Bummer. We went to plan B, they had plenty of tables available.

Here's the last bit of sunset right before we walked into the restaurant.

We chose this place because they had half price pupus (appetizers) during "happy hour". We sat at a table, and it was a really fancy place. Everything was pretty expensive. The half price cost was just about the same as regular price at home. Plus we had been seated in the restaurant area, which, as it turned out, was not where we should be for half price apps. We needed to be in the bar area. But they were full. Our waiter was a totally cool guy, he said he'd do the discount for us anyway. I felt bad that we were taking up a table where he could be earning a much bigger tip, but we stayed. We had fried prawns, crab cakes, BBQ ribs, and I splurged a little and ordered a fried prawn california sushi roll as well. They also had bread service, so we ate a few rolls each as well.

The ribs were by far the best thing we ordered. Pretty much perfect.



After dinner, we drove around a bit. There are only two main roads that travel north/south on the side of the island we were on, so it was really easy to navigate through. Plus we did have our Garmin to help us if we needed it (We used it quite a lot this whole trip). We found this little ice cream shop while driving around, and got some ice cream.

It had rained the whole day. People were saying it was more rain than they'd seen in years. The forecast said it should last the whole weekend. We weren't too thrilled to think our whole Maui stay would be a rainy one. But, in case it cleared up a little, we still made plans.

It was only half of a day, but we could already tell we were going to like Maui once we got out and saw more of it.