Aaaaaah Hav-aii

One month ago, we were in paradise: Maui. Still not sure why we came back unless it was to share all our fabulous pictures. I am ready to return, already. We took over 700, yes seven hundred, pictures. I will spare you and try to hit some highlights.

This was our favorite snorkeling spot, Honolu'a Bay and Makulei'a Bay. They are in a marine life reserve and the snorkeling was amazing. The water was so blue, the pictures don't do it justice. My mostest favorite thing was an octupus! It was gi-normous and we followed it around for the better part of an hour, just watching it changes colors and textures. So very, very cool.


We saw schools of fish and every tropical fish you could imagine, Parrot fish, butterfly fish, trumpet fish and on and on.Somehow this little spot gets the fish that you normally only see deep-sea diving but it's an amazing sheltered reef so we lucked out snorkeling. Oh, and we saw an eel. An 8 foot moray eel! Ewwwwh. Luckily it was swimming away from us.



I can't decide what was my next favorite thing. Perhaps the luau? Or maybe the beaches? Or Hana, the tropical rainforest. Let's start with the luau. Yummy food and great show. And just a really cool picture:
I had so much fun using the Digital SLR camera. I went "tourist" all the way. But I'll spare you most of the luau pictures.


I really loved driving through Hana. It's this rainforest on the backside of Hawaii. It has hundreds, thousands of waterfalls, huge bamboo and other vegetation and the road winds like you woldn't believe. The road trip is probably less than 100 miles and yet takes 6 hours to drive. Here is the first waterfall we hiked to: Many of the waterfalls you can see from the road but when you hiked back, you got to walk through all the cool trees. This is one of the newer bamboo forests, most were 20 times taller.














And here is another waterfall:













And as you drive higher up the moutains you could stop and look out over the ocean.

And every look out is prettier than the next.


Just a cool pic that Brad took:



I am having a hell of a time narrowing down the pictures, as you can tell. Only two more things on the road to Hana. The black sand beach was really cool and REALLY hot, as you can imagine black sand would be. I don't know what my fascination is with toes in the sand but I always take this same picture whenever at a beach.









This is from the beach looking out back at the rocks and beach:


I had forgotten how lush and vivid everything was.











And last, after the road to Hana, there was the seven sacred ponds, or in the off season, the seven sacred holes where water might have been but now there are exactly 2 ponds with a million tourists crammed in.

From all the pictures in the brochures, it could be really amazing.......if you go in the right season which is November - March. Guess we'll just have to take another trip here again soon!

Oh my hell. This post is getting super long and I've only covered 3 days! Ok, I'll try to do the rest in fast forward:

Sunsets; gorgeous every night




Fabulous beaches. An amazing one right across from our hotel in Kihei:



Super fun little seaside shopping district in Lahina. I mighta been not so keen on posing for pictures:

And right there in Lahina is one of the oldest bayan trees in the world. It spans an entire city block. One tree. It was very cool in person. The tree gets so big that it sends roots out from each branch to the ground to support itself. Again, a must see in person.


Here is one of the few pictures of Brad and I. We were eating at a yummy resturant right on the beach. There was just so many wonderful things to take pictures of, that we forgot to turn the cameras on ourselves!

There are about a million other things we did but I'm tired just remembering it all! It was the perfect trip with the perfect person. The last picture is me showing my love for the hubbie, writing in the sand. So very sappy.