TUESDAY, MARCH 18

We were up early on Tuesday morning after what seemed like not much sleep.  John gave the dogs a walk and then at 8:30, we headed out.  The flight was leaving Victoria at noon (heading to Vancouver before the ‘real’ flight to Maui. I used the online check in and it was definitely a good experience.

Air Canada was good – marks deducted for re-telling the passengers where the emergency exits were as we were making the final approach to the airport. The flight itself wasn’t too bad – some turbulence but not extremely bad.  Some interesting ‘mood’ lighting on the plane – it rotated through a few colours over and over (my favorite was the purple ones).

We landed about 6:30 Maui time, picked up our suitcase and headed for the car rental shuttle bus, by this time it was dark and I was glad I had brought our GPS.  The rental process didn’t take too long and we scored 2 tickets to the Maui Ocean Center.  Next stop, a grocery store for breakfast stuff. John found the Safeway without any problem because hehad researched and driven it on Google Earth (TomTom wasn’t any help because he doesn’t have grocery stores in his list of important places).  What a shock at the store, very little in the way of dairy ‘products left on the shelves and not much bread either.  We finally found a few things and programmed the condo address into the GPS.  TomTom directed us well to the turnoff and then he got strange and had us doing a circle and heading back in the same direction we had come from.  Luckily, we ignored him (causing him to spend a lot of time recalculating until he was turned off).

The right place found, we checked in and found our room – ground floor in Building 8.  Hmmm, we knew most of the units didn’t have an ocean view but we had been hoping.  Ok, we knew the beach was across the road, so we would be happy with that.  The unit is a little smaller than we expected – not really a problem since it’s just the 2 of us. I took a few pictures, we had a snack and headed to bed.

 

 

WEDNESDAY, March 19

John was up early, really early for Maui time (3 hours behind us) so he went for a walk.  I woke up about 6 a.m. and was thinking of getting up when John came back and suggested we go for a walk before breakfast.  It was beautiful outside – we walked along the beach for a while and spent some time watching a dachshund digging a hole in the sand.  We were amazed to find that dogs are allowed on the beach – and there is a large fine ($500) if you ‘forget’ to scoop the poop.

When we opened the curtains in the morning, we were pleasantly surprised by the view – we did have a ocean view *s*

After breakfast, we checked out the information seminar in the clubhouse at the resort.  It was put on by Expedia (the company that owns our vacation ownership also owns Expedia) and was quite informative.  There were 4 families who attended and we all won a door prize.  Ours was a 2 for 1 mask and snorkel rental which didn’t thrill us because John brought his own.  Someone behind us won 2 for 1 tickets to a theatre performance which they had already seen so they asked if we would trade.  It didn’t seem like a fair trade for them but they were quite happy to get the snorkel equipment.  We were happier with those tickets and were talking about when we should go when another family asked if we would like to switch them for their 2 for 1 Hana guided van tour.  Hell yeah!  I think we should be on Barter Kings  *g*

Our information seminar over and our tickets booked for the Hana Road trip on Saturday and a Helicopter Circle Tour of the Island for next Tuesday, we went exploring in the car (a Ford Focus – bright red!).  We drove up the coast to Maalea to check out where we are meeting for the snorkel trip  and then puttered around before finding the Safeway again to get more groceries for the other meals.  The shelves were not bare this time.

Mostly a lazy day after that, but we did go and find our first geocache on Maui.  It was down at LaPerouse Bay, and it is a fascinating drive down there – you go through the old lava flow (from over 200 hears ago).

The beaches are beautiful – it was 87 degrees Fahrenheit today and we love it!