As we first approached the island of Maui I was reminded of what a lush, luxuriously green paradise we were about to visit. In some ways, returning to Maui feels a little like returning home after a long absence.
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Here’s another aerial view, this time looking south, towards Kihei.
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We’ve rented a condo with a relatively decent ocean view. It’s located in the Kahana area, between Kaanapali and Napili, home of many budget priced, ocean view accomodations. The place is a one bedroom unit with a full kitchen, which is very convenient.
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Here’s a picture of some Protea flowers and a couple of Birds of Paradise. We got the flowers while upcountry, on the road to Haleakala. On the way back down we saw them growing wild along side the road. The bushes were quite striking, reaching 15 to 20 feet in height.
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Of course, Maui is famous for its rainbows:
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The view from Mama’s are as good as the food. We each had the stuffed mahi-mahi and split a Black Pearl for dessert. The mahi-mahi was stuffed with crab, lobster, Maui onion and macadamia nuts. It was accompanied by grilled asparagus and lemon rice. Very, very good. Very, very much the most expensive lunch I’ve ever eaten, but well worth every dollar. The pearl part of dessert was made of chocolate mousse, with a shiny chocolate glaze and the shell was baked using almond flour.
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One of our absolutely favorite things to do while visiting Maui is snorkeling. We think the best place to snorkel is at Honolua Bay, so that’s where we went first. The water was warmer than I remembered, with pretty good clarity, especially the further out one went. Even so, runoff from the recent rains left a slightly red haze lingering near the top of the water. The usual wide variety of fish, along with some corals were there, just as we remembered. We did see a very large eel, but I was already out of film by then. Here are a few pictures that came out reasonably OK:
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No real dramatic sunsets yet, but this one wasn’t bad at all:
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