Impression From Maui

Who would have thought that Costco is the best travel agent for vacations to Hawaii? Last year, Victoria and I booked our honeymoon to the Grand Hyatt on Kauai and absolutely loved it. The same package was available this year, but we decided to try something different. After a bit of soul searching (Dominican Republic? Puerto Rico?), we settled on a similar deal for the Hyatt Regency on Maui. Similar deal from Costco, including a rental car and other amenities. It was fun! A few memories from the trip:

• Watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall on the iPhone on the flight to Maui. Damn, it’s a great movie! Perfect flow, funny at the right places, racy when appropriate, and appealing to both genders. Judd Apatov Brat Pack FTW!

• Spending days at Little Beach and swimming in the ocean. I don’t need to snorkel, I just need the waves! Victoria got almost hit in the head by a boogie boarder, though

• Getting up at 3:45 in the morning to take drive up to the Haleakala crater. The sunrise at 10,000 feet is supposed to be the best in the world… unless the entire crater is fogged in, that is, like on the day we went. We drove two hours, braved sub 40″ temperatures, waited for over an hour with many other people – and saw (almost) nothing But I’m still glad we took the trip together. It’s an adventure. We caught some neat glimpses of the fog wavering through the crater, and if we ever come back it will be twice as grand!

• Finding a praying mantis in the middle of the night at the unlikeliest of places: the pump of a 76 station. Those things are cool (the mantis, not the gas station)! And a tiny bit freaky.

• Watching Madagascar 2 in the theater in Lahaina with a crowd of screaming, out-of-control kids. The movie is funny, if a bit on the convoluted side. Four or five major story strands that all come together somehow, but fragment the movie.

• Watching NASCAR in the Grotto pool bar. Congratulations Clint Bowyer, and congratulations Jimmie Johnson!

• Renting Pineapple Express over the hotel’s entertainment system. It started out promising, but went absolutely nowhere, as you would expect of a stoner movie. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t stoned and quickly lost interest.

• Being called by hotel security to extinguish the two candles we had burning on the balcony because they posed a security risk (Whaa?)

• Laying in the hammock at the beach and star-gazing on our last night.

• Hearing Victoria shrieking all the way down the (pitch black) water slide, emerging from the water shouting “Holy shit!” Did I mention that the slide exits right next to the toddler pool?

• Driving around all of West Maui on winding one lane roads. Not as scary to us as to somebody who isn’t used to hway 1 or the hills of San Anselmo, but exciting nonetheless. We didn’t do the Hana Highway, opting to be slobs at the pool instead.

• Passing on our beach umbrella to the next guests. Gotta keep the spirit alive!

Now it’s back to the good old work week, which will be very exciting in its own right, though. Here are are few pictures from the trip!