Friday October 5, 2007 - Maui - day1

It's a big day for the birthday boy - but he didn't know it yet! And in honor of the big day there's no snorkeling today either. I'm going through withdrawal and every time I see water, my mind starts thinking about what I'm missing just under those waves. But sometimes you just have to sacrifice!

It was a mite rough tendering from the ship to the dock. The tenders moved 3 feet up and down as we were boarding. A little scary, but we made it. Other couples in our group had some unfortunate timing issues with the tenders, but Steve and I seemed to get lucky and not have any difficulties at all.

Another quick shuttle (provided by the rental company) to the rental car and we were once again on our way. When Steve found out that the rental company had only 2 cars that weren't booked for rentals yet and one of them was a crossfire he was thinking about ditching our car and switching to that. But it would have been 3 times the price of the cost to rent the car I had reserved for BOTH days. So we had to make do with an HHR. I'm SOOOO glad we didn't buy one when Steve was looking at cars a couple of years ago!

Next stop was the ocean center. It's a very nice aquarium but we were a little short on time due to my Birthday surprise for Steve. But I didn't manage to get some great pics. I especially liked this one of the sea turtle (left). Unfortunately I actually had to pretend I was rushing out of there to get to the scrapbook store i REALLY needed to see in Kahului - most times i would have spent all day in a place like this, but time was ticking away.

Incidentally i was really impressed with the selection at this store and the Hawaiian diecuts is to 'die' for. (sorry, i couldn't resist). Here's the website - you can order via the internet. http://www.islandpaperie.com/ I definitely wish I could have spent more time here! I only had about 15 minutes, so it was a good thing I took a list. This time Steve decided to look around in the store too. (even though they have a 'penalty box' for the guys to kill time in).

So now it was time for the big surprise. I had booked him a helicopter ride in Maui! Yes dear, this was why I had to leave the Canada Day celebrations early - so I could try to nab a 1/2 price deal on the Hawaii gold card website at 12:00 noon Hawaii time. But wouldn't you know it. Even though I was at home and at the computer at 6:00 pm our time, the deal was snatched up at the last second. So I missed it. And a repeat performance happened the following month. At exactly 12:00 pm Hawaii time, the tickets disappeared. Sigh! And by this time I had myself convinced this was a GREAT birthday present idea. So I just went to the website and booked the internet rate there. Yes, it was pricey, but I was pretty sure he'd love it. I should have remembered he doesn't like surprises and he doesn't like to be rushed. After all we did have the zip-line excursion booked for 3 and the helicopter ride was booked for 12:45. So he wasn't too impressed at first, and we thought we had gotten lost on our way to the airport - there was a detour for construction. We were about 15 mins late because there's a safety briefing and they had no way of knowing we had been through the exact same safety video the day before, so even though we were there exactly at 12:45 we did hold them up in doing the safety video. Once we got in the air things turned out wonderful. We were able to see an aerial view of Hana which were were going to have to miss since it would have taken us all day to drive there and back. And we didn't have to drive the zig zap roads to see Hana. I'm sure we missed lots, but I heard that even though the road to Hana is a coastal road, You don't see much of the ocean on the drive there.

And, we still had lots of time for the 30 minute drive to the Zip line excursion. I don't have enough words, thumbs etc. to describe how exhilarating and just plain, fun, this was. Here's the website http://www.skylinehawaii.com/ But book early - it fills up fast. And save yourself some money by booking it online. I used my Hawaii gold card and saved a bit more, but booking it online, you save more than 1/2 of what you'd pay booking it through the cruise ship. We booked the Haleakala Skyline Tour and it was an absolute BLAST. And the drive up and down the volcano was pretty scenic too. A little difficut to get pictures, but very nice all the same.

When we go back to Hawaii we'll be doing the Kaanapali Skyline Adventure for sure!

We parked the car in a parking lot not far from the pier. We did go a couple of blocks further away and it cost us only $12. The ones closer were running $20 or more. And we only about a block away from these. In hindsight we probably could have dropped the car back to the rental agency. It turned out that we didn't really need the car the next day. But more about that later.

We did do a little shop hopping once we parked the car. (This was Steve's idea actually - honest) There is a multitude of little galleries etc. lining the roads around the pier. There's even a Wyland gallery there. But we've been finding Wyland very expensive and somewhat out of our budget range. But we did find a gallery for Chritian Lassen (i hope I spelled that write). And I fell in love with a particular piece of art. Oh let's face it, I fell in love with most of his pieces. But more about that later too.

There was no rush to get back to the ship this time, because we were in port over night. But we headed back in time for our scheduled late seating for dinner and enjoyed a good meal on the boat. There are some neat looking restaurants around the port, but since the price of the cruise included meals, we figured, why bother paying for another meal. Not to mention that the days activities had pretty much tired us out!