The road to Hana...

Please excuse the way the pictures are in this post. For some reason Blogger is not allowing me to move them anywhere so I will just post as is...

This was my most favorite day of this trip so far. This is how I thought Maui would look. Temptation Tours luxury van wisked 7 of us down the road. Buzz the tour guide filled our heads with history and knowledge of the area. WHEN I come back to Maui, I will spend more time here.

This side of the island is totally different from the side we're staying on. This side received hundreds of inches more of rain per year. It is filled with invasive plant species and invasive mammals and birds - mongoose, junglefowl, philodendron.

This side of the island also houses the rich and the famous. Residing, owning property or have resided here are: Jim Nabors, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristoferson, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor and Oprah.

Sailing to Lanai

We boarded the Trilogy VI bound for the island of Lanai, within sight of Lahaina. The seas were much calmer than our whale watch a few days earlier. Within a few minutes several whales were in view giving us a better show than on our whale watch cruise.

We watched a baby, probably only a few days old rolling and playing in the water. The mother stays below the baby ensuring that it would be able to make it to the suface to breathe every few minutes.

Nearing the island of Lanai, we passed several steep cliff faces in the lava.

We landed in the only harbor/settlement on the island. Lanai is also known as the Pineapple Island because of its past as an island-wide pineapple plantation. The island is privately owned. When the labor costs for growing pineapples was deemed to be cheaper elsewhere in the world, the pineapple fields were given up in favor of 2 world class resorts. All the labor that worked in the fields now works in the resorts.

We were given a short tour through the habited part of the island and then given some free time on beach to either snorkel, hike, explore tide pools or lay on the beach.

After a wonderful dinner on a pavilion, we headed back out into the Pacific for our ride home. This time within a few minutes we ran into a pod of Hawaiian dolphins. The swam in front of the boat for quite a time before they headed out to sea.

Before the sun set, we were treated to a short sail into the wind. What a beautiful day this was!