Dashing and Bold Adventure: Last Week In Maui

I really like Maui Sunset Resort. It’s a super functional complex with a gym, tennis courts, BBQs, shuffle board, book exchange, and of course the pool. The grounds are impeccably maintained to the point that the lawn looks fake. One review online even complained that for such a nice place, the least they could do is put in real grass! The housekeeping staff is lovely. The only downside is the office staff. Both ladies we met were abrupt and dismissive… they clearly did not hire them for their public relations skills.

A lot of the owners are here on extensive vacations or they live here permanently. One lady moved here forty years ago with her husband. She just moved out recently after her 100^th birthday. She had a room on the ground floor with doors that opened to the lawn. As she became disabled, the groundskeepers would open her sliding glass doors every morning to allow visitors and at night they’d come by and close everything up for her. I wish we could’ve met her.

In case you didn’t know it, chickens have taken over Maui. Not just your average chickens either. These are big, little, lean, fluffy, black, brown, and bright multi-colored. There’s one particular family of a mom and three teenage chicks who come running as soon as they see Izzy. It’s adorable how much it seems as though they want to greet her.

Joe and Izzy took surfing lessons. I took so many pictures it was hard to decide which one to show here, but for some reason I liked this crosswalk pic the best. They were out there on the little baby waves for a couple of hours.

While they were surfing, Bill and I went to an outdoor market called Kihei Kalama Village. The little shops were pretty basic, but the grounds were gorgeous. I loved all the trees integrated into the mall. They also have plenty of restaurants there and a cat named Tommy Kalama.

At the top of the list of cool things we did was wine tasting. Maui Wine, formerly Tedeschi Winery, is up-country on HWY 37. It’s across the road from the Ulupalakua Ranch. Ulupalakua has a little general store with western-wear and gifts, plus a deli and a BBQ outside where they cook up burgers. The wine was very good. Surprisingly, I liked the pineapple wine enough to buy a bottle. I also liked the Syrah and the Malbec. I’m sitting here now sipping from a glass of the Syrah Joe bought us. The drive was beautiful and very high up the mountainside, so you can get some great views out to sea.

We went snorkeling this morning near our place and it wasn’t a good sight for snorkelers. It was a good place for turtles though. The entire time we were out there (maybe half an hour) we never went deeper than a couple of feet. With choppy water and a surf, it was always a concern to stay off the reef. It was also murky, so it was a surprise when suddenly you’d be literally on top of a giant turtle. I was so worried about hitting one or cutting up my knees on the reef that I got out of the water.

We’re on our fifth puzzle now. I brought two and we did those way too fast. Then we found one down at the book exchange. We finished that one and found one here in one of the cupboards. Out of desperate addiction we went to Ross and bought another puzzle of a turtle in the sea.

Speaking of turtles, we returned to the VFW Beach to watch the turtles come out for the night. This time there was a large group of people there watching… mostly volunteers from a church from the mainland. They had Lahaina-relief shirts on.

Izzy and I have tried to get a few days of writing in. One day we decided to go to Kalama Park. It’s a large park with all kinds of sports areas and a massive tented play-structure. We found a picnic table under a giant tree and settled in for some peaceful writing. Before the guys took off Joe had to try out the swing-set.

The first event to make us realize that we’d made a poor choice of parks was the guy in a wheelchair trying to maneuver across the grass while singing “I shot the sheriff” at the top of his lungs. That sort of drowned out the family singing and playing the ukulele. Next came the group of guys and their ice chests of food and baggies of weed. We were beginning to be concerned about getting a serious contact high. Then another guy showed up with a dog who barked like it wanted to kill the dog with the stoners. Surprisingly the stoners let their dog run free. It came straight to the aggressive barking dog. I hate that feeling of impending doom at the prospect of a dog fight. But shockingly the barker cowered and whined when the stoner’s dog reached him… it turns out that it was a mother and son who were meeting for the first time since being weened.

Then a sweet dad loaded up his two daughters onto the swings and commenced pushing them to shouts of “higher!” He obeyed until the younger one went flying through the air and landed on her back. There was a moment of tense silence until she breathed and then cried. Dad scooped her up and they went home. Then came the digging chickens. These little guys dig like a dog—dirt was flying as they worked to get that elusive worm. Finally came the guy who laid out a towel on the grass and proceeded to lay in every possible way like a contortionist… seriously, he looked like a living pretzel. We didn’t get much writing done.

One of the most exciting things to rattle our nerves was on Sunday when our waitress wrote the date on our left-overs container—the 5^th. That sparked a discussion. We all thought it was the 4^th, because we were leaving on Wednesday the 7^th. All of our cell phones came out at once to confirm that she was right and we were leaving on Tuesday the 7^th not Wednesday the 7^th. I can just picture us all lounging around the pool watching the plane fly over and saying, “Those poor saps are going home now, but not us… we don’t have to leave until Wednesday.” What a mess that would’ve been :)

We went to Chang’s Beach again for some snorkeling yesterday. It was pretty rough, but we did it anyway. It was kinda cute when a turtle swam up to me and watched me put my fins on. It was maybe six inches away from my legs. It even came up to look at me with those ancient eyes.

Last night we went out to dinner one last time to the Maui Brewing Company. That’s a really fun place. It started out with a vicious game of foosball. Izzy and Joe tied 7/7, which led to a heated discussion of who would’ve won if they hadn’t called us to our table.

They usually have a one-man band there, which is nice. I have to say, it’s a little humiliating to order food there because their ordering system is all done through your phone. We didn’t even try the first time, but we decided to try it last night. What a fiasco! No matter what any of us tried we couldn’t get our orders on the same bill. Our sweet waitress, Emily, took pity on us and got our order the old-fashioned way. It really kind-of puts a damper on the mood when everyone is looking at their phones and then getting frustrated. Of course, no one else seemed to be struggling with it.