Today's tour is to Lahaina where Mx moved to the other day. It's much more of a tourist resort. The Hawaiian Islands tend to be set up so that the resorts are on the south side of the islands where the ocean is calmer. The north side's tend to have the better waves and tides for the surfers and also tend to have more rain.
Lahaina means sun to earth and has consistent warm weather throughout the year. Yet just 8 miles away, up the mountain is one of the wettest places on earth, that sees 300 inches of rain a year. That's Hawaii for you.
We hired some snorkelling gear ($5.25) and headed up to Kaanapali beach to snorkel around the black rock bay. Kaanapali is known as the whalers village and is also a popular tourist resort. If Makena beach was the secluded tropical paradise then this was the opposite. The snorkelling however was magical. This was my first time snorkelling and after a few lung fulls of water I eventually worked out how to breathe properly and saw a wondrous array of fish of all shapes, sizes and beautiful colours. Unfortunately there were no tetras.
We went back to Lahaina where I met up with Mx for a while. We saw the Buddhist temple and the huge Banyan trees. Banyan trees are quite strange trees. They send roots down from their branches to get all the nutrients from the air. Eventually when the new root hits the ground they form new trunks and so the trees spreads far and wide. Apparently one tree in India is now the size of 3 football fields.
Lahaina is a very nice resort and this is how people vacation when they are not in hostels. I like the seclusion of Wailuku, it's nice to be able to do the tours with the other travellers and they’ll be plenty of time to get to the resorts later.
The main reason for coming to Lahaina was to watch the stunning sunset. Unfortunately it was happy hour in the 'Moose' so we missed it. At least the beer was cold and cheap.
We left the Alaskan contingent (nose rubbers), the girl from the picture, on a beach in the middle of nowhere. They wanted to camp out there. Rather them than me, but they will get a beautiful view in the morning.
I went to dinner with a couple of space cadets, my new friends Brandy and Rich and learnt about circumcisions. Not the best dinner topic, but I was amazed to learn that 85% of American men, 25% of Australian and 5% of English men are circumcised. Sorry to bring that up and I'll leave you with that thought.
