More Maui
July 23 2006
We -- Dad, Claudia, Jack, Michael and I -- got up early this morning for the helicopter ride. (Yes, that's right, we took a tour of the entire island in a helicopter. Totally cool.) It was awesome. I'd never been in a helicopter before, so just that by itself was pretty incredible, but the thrill of the ride was outweighed by the amazing views of Maui. I was lucky enough to get a window seat -- they seat you by weight, so poor Michael got stuck in the middle in the back. He could still see, but not quite as well as I could. I took loads of pictures, but we also got a DVD of it -- they have cameras in the nose, the tail, and on the sides of the helicopter and they record what's said on the headset so you have a recording of your specific trip. Pretty cool... I mean, clearly it's a tourist trap, because they charge you $25 per DVD, so they're making quite a profit. But $25 isn't all that expensive, so we bought it. We had so much fun and it was so beautiful that we figured it was worth it. We went at 8:30 in the morning, so the skies were still clear and visibility was good. Our pilot was Austrian, but he's lived on Maui for eleven years. What a hard job -- flying around in a helicopter a couple times a day and showing off his home. I can't think of anything better. I asked him how one gets that kind of job, and he said "you have to kiss a lot of asses." :-) Yeah, he was hilarious.
The flight took about an hour and afterwards we had talked about going hiking, possibly up on Haleakala (huge volcano I talked about last time), but it turns out that Jack and Michael apparently don't want to hike at all while we're here, so we compromised. Instead of going hiking, we went to this little trail that led to a view of the Iao Needle, named because it is a part of Maui's mountain ridge that looks like a needle from the right perspective. I don't know, I didn't really see it -- it's more of a tall, skinnyish point. The ancient Hawaiians saw it as the phallic symbol of the god of water. I can see that a little more than I can see a needle, honestly. The path to the viewpoint wasn't a hike at all -- it was paved and went through a little botanical garden. Beautiful garden, right by a river, and actually a very historic site for the natives. It was the site of a huge inter-island battle in the twelfth or thirteenth century (I forget which). The fight was so ferocious and savage that it left women and children as well as men and soldiers slaughtered in such abundance that they clogged the river. Isn't that ridiculous? It made me really sad to think about it... and the name of the river was actually changed to commemorate the dead; it's something morbid like River of Blood or Stream of Guts or something like that. I don't remember exactly. I just remember thinking it was a really gross way to memorialize it. Ugh. But the whole area is really pretty now, so... yeah. We actually ran into Uncle Dave and Duke at the park -- totally random; they were entertaining themselves while they waited to hear from Aunt Mary, who was at the HOSPITAL with Libby. She'd gone swimming out to the reef by our condos and had had some kind of crazy allergic reaction to something in the water. On our first full day. Poor Libby.
After our faux hike, we went to lunch at Buzz's Wharf. We had a sweet waitress. Her name was Iwaloni, pronounced Eevahlohnee. She told us to just call her Eva because it's easier, but I really love her Hawaiian name. The language is beautiful. It only has 12 letters -- the five vowels and seven consonants: W, M, N, H, L, K, and P. And the w's are generally pronounced like v's. It's very musical, really. Smooth and lilting. Lovely.
We came back to the condos to just relax and hang out after lunch. Jack told me he wanted to go horseback riding and parasailing while we're here, so I looked through some guidebooks and found some places to go... called around... it's all so ridiculously expensive. We finally decided to stick with just horseback riding, because the parasailing was something insane like $70 per person for a ten minute ride in the air... yikes. Once we'd gotten that worked out, we all packed up and went over to Kaanipali Beach for a few hours. I went snorkeling with some of the kids and it was amazing. The fish got really close, and there was a huge sea turtle! He was swimming around a relatively shallow area and I swam over to get a closer look, and he all of a sudden swam up to the top and brushed up against me. It was totally cool. Actually it was pretty slimey, but you know. Exciting nonetheless.
To end the day, we came back together at the condos to grill out for dinner. Libby was back and feeling a little better -- tired, but at least she wasn't dying. Sheesh. We had a great time watching the sun go down again. It was a good day.
To be continued....
We -- Dad, Claudia, Jack, Michael and I -- got up early this morning for the helicopter ride. (Yes, that's right, we took a tour of the entire island in a helicopter. Totally cool.) It was awesome. I'd never been in a helicopter before, so just that by itself was pretty incredible, but the thrill of the ride was outweighed by the amazing views of Maui. I was lucky enough to get a window seat -- they seat you by weight, so poor Michael got stuck in the middle in the back. He could still see, but not quite as well as I could. I took loads of pictures, but we also got a DVD of it -- they have cameras in the nose, the tail, and on the sides of the helicopter and they record what's said on the headset so you have a recording of your specific trip. Pretty cool... I mean, clearly it's a tourist trap, because they charge you $25 per DVD, so they're making quite a profit. But $25 isn't all that expensive, so we bought it. We had so much fun and it was so beautiful that we figured it was worth it. We went at 8:30 in the morning, so the skies were still clear and visibility was good. Our pilot was Austrian, but he's lived on Maui for eleven years. What a hard job -- flying around in a helicopter a couple times a day and showing off his home. I can't think of anything better. I asked him how one gets that kind of job, and he said "you have to kiss a lot of asses." :-) Yeah, he was hilarious.
The flight took about an hour and afterwards we had talked about going hiking, possibly up on Haleakala (huge volcano I talked about last time), but it turns out that Jack and Michael apparently don't want to hike at all while we're here, so we compromised. Instead of going hiking, we went to this little trail that led to a view of the Iao Needle, named because it is a part of Maui's mountain ridge that looks like a needle from the right perspective. I don't know, I didn't really see it -- it's more of a tall, skinnyish point. The ancient Hawaiians saw it as the phallic symbol of the god of water. I can see that a little more than I can see a needle, honestly. The path to the viewpoint wasn't a hike at all -- it was paved and went through a little botanical garden. Beautiful garden, right by a river, and actually a very historic site for the natives. It was the site of a huge inter-island battle in the twelfth or thirteenth century (I forget which). The fight was so ferocious and savage that it left women and children as well as men and soldiers slaughtered in such abundance that they clogged the river. Isn't that ridiculous? It made me really sad to think about it... and the name of the river was actually changed to commemorate the dead; it's something morbid like River of Blood or Stream of Guts or something like that. I don't remember exactly. I just remember thinking it was a really gross way to memorialize it. Ugh. But the whole area is really pretty now, so... yeah. We actually ran into Uncle Dave and Duke at the park -- totally random; they were entertaining themselves while they waited to hear from Aunt Mary, who was at the HOSPITAL with Libby. She'd gone swimming out to the reef by our condos and had had some kind of crazy allergic reaction to something in the water. On our first full day. Poor Libby.
After our faux hike, we went to lunch at Buzz's Wharf. We had a sweet waitress. Her name was Iwaloni, pronounced Eevahlohnee. She told us to just call her Eva because it's easier, but I really love her Hawaiian name. The language is beautiful. It only has 12 letters -- the five vowels and seven consonants: W, M, N, H, L, K, and P. And the w's are generally pronounced like v's. It's very musical, really. Smooth and lilting. Lovely.
We came back to the condos to just relax and hang out after lunch. Jack told me he wanted to go horseback riding and parasailing while we're here, so I looked through some guidebooks and found some places to go... called around... it's all so ridiculously expensive. We finally decided to stick with just horseback riding, because the parasailing was something insane like $70 per person for a ten minute ride in the air... yikes. Once we'd gotten that worked out, we all packed up and went over to Kaanipali Beach for a few hours. I went snorkeling with some of the kids and it was amazing. The fish got really close, and there was a huge sea turtle! He was swimming around a relatively shallow area and I swam over to get a closer look, and he all of a sudden swam up to the top and brushed up against me. It was totally cool. Actually it was pretty slimey, but you know. Exciting nonetheless.
To end the day, we came back together at the condos to grill out for dinner. Libby was back and feeling a little better -- tired, but at least she wasn't dying. Sheesh. We had a great time watching the sun go down again. It was a good day.
To be continued....
posted by Kira at 12:39 PM
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