Best of Maui

Monday, February 10, 2020

Some sort of storm system moved in today, so it was a very changeable day.  Lots of rain, and then no rain and sunshine.  A lot of tours were cancelled today.  We got lucky because we had booked the 6 hour Best of Maui tour offered by the ship. The tour covered highlights of west Maui.

We started at the Iao Valley and climbed up 134 steps to the Iao Needle. The Iao Needle is a 2250 foot cinder cone (basically a high, pointed piece of rock), with a fantastic overlook.  Lots of sunshine here!

The next stop was the Maui Tropical Plantation. We had a 40 minute tram tour that went through orchards and gardens. 

Available in the gift shop:

The tour then continued to the Maui Ocean Center, which is an aquarium that focuses on marine life found specifically around Hawaii. Some of the species are only found in this area.  This is when it really started to rain.  But we had lots of indoor aquariums to see.

We had lunch at the Aquarium, and they randomly seated us with another lady from the ship who we didn't know, but who turned out to be from Mount Forest, just up the road from us back home.  What are the chances that we would be having lunch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with someone who turned out to use the same library system as us?!?!

We got back at 2:30 and stopped at a little shop with Hawaiian made shirts.  Frankie saw one that reminded her of the Hawaiian shirt her dad used to have, so she bought it.  And she actually convinced Anton to get a Hawaiian shirt too, which was a miracle.  We'll probably wear them later this week.  There were Hawaiian shirts for dogs and we were SOOO tempted to buy one for Jasper, they even came in his size!!!

We finally had a chance to explore the ship, the biggest surprise was finding an arcade on board.  We came across some passengers taking hula lessons, which was hilarious.  Not a single male to be found.

Tonight we went to one of the specialty restaurants.  It was a Brazilian restaurant, so all they did was bring around different meats for us to try (11 meats in all). There was a green card you would turn face up when you wanted meat, and when you turned it over it was red, which meant you wanted a break. On the first meat, Anton took 2 pieces.  By the third meat, we were sharing.  And by the 9th meat, we were done.  

Poor Frankie.  The ship was rocking so much when it left port that all that Brazilian meat did not stay down.  And then all the toilets on our section of the ship stopped flushing.

As our funny bus driver said, "If life doesn't go right, just go left".