And it was awesome. 5 days in Maui, 5 days in Kauai...like Kauai much better than Maui. It's much more wild and natural and more laid back / less commercialized. Maui was fun too, don't get me wrong, but it was congested and the hotel wasn't that great, nor was the location, oh, and the cockraches crawling all over the food at the hotel an the flocks of small birds all over the food...not cool. Definetly put a damper on things and made us not want to be there. Ick!

Maui Highlights:
ATV'ing on Mt. Haleakala
Swimming with Green Turtles
Snorkeling at Molokini
Shopping for crap in Lahaina
Painted Eucalyptis Trees
Waianapanapa Park
creeping through a bamboo forest looking for waterfalls and not know where we were going
SHave ice!! (I want to start a shave ice stand here!)

Maui Lowlights:
the mustang convertible we rented..shoulda rented a Jeep.
The Hyatt Regency- too far from everything, allegedly it's a 5 star hotel with prices to match, but what you get for that ain't much.
The Road to Hana- 11 hours, 60 miles going 15 miles an hour. Nothing is marked, hard to pull off to look at stuff. Wouldn't waste a day doing it again
The Archduke getting kamikaze'd by bee while driving w/ top down. Bee stings him millimeters from his eyeball
paying $40 for a "cabana" on the beach. A cabana being 2 old, wooden attached beach chairs with a hood that you can pull over them, and having hotel staff ask repeatedly and rudely "Did you rent this?"

Kauai Highlights-
Waimea Canyon
taking a catamaran around the Napali Coast
the ruins of the Coco Palms Hotel (where elvis filmed Blue Hawaii)
Allerton Gardens- the eucalyptis trees were unbelievable. They also shot Jurassic park here
Hanalei town
Bubba Burgers
the catamaran tour guide that had "Menehune" tattooed just above his junk and me asking what menehune meant...
Wailua falls
The Grand Hyatt- the place was unbelievable. Gorgeous, somehow the staff there knows your name, treated like rockstars, the grounds were stunning
Seeing a large dolhin pod all around the boat on Napali Coast, must have seen like 50 of them, I wanted to dive in with them
Flying fish
saw 2 monk seals which apparently is a rare thing to see
Room Service

Lowlights:
would have liked to have seen more of the north side of the island
Polihale beach- 5 mile road with the deepest, biggest, nastiest potholes ho can imagine. Car kept bottoming out, we never made it there.
Should have rented a Jeep

welcome back!! can't wait to see pics!

Really? I liked Maui as much as Kauai. I thought the road to Hanna (did you take it?) on Maui was a stunning example of natural Hawaii at its best.

The wymia (sp?) canyon in Kauai was also pretty stunning.

ok, I re-read your post....


if you had a decent tour book, the road to hana is amazing. I thought it was the highlight of my trip - that and the pre-dawn drive to the volcano to watch the sun rise. THAT was stunning.

Nice. Your back hold out ok?

e.s.p.

n00dz and other uncompromising situations which may have occured

thanks!! When will I see you guys next?!




We did make it to Haleakala, but it was in the afternoon for some 4 wheeling, if we go back to Maui, I definetly want to do this. The view was pretty great from the trail. I actually forgot my good Maui guide book, and bought a fodor's day-by-day book which was terrible, the directions to the sights on Hana were awful. "Turn right at the dbl row of mailboxes for Twin Falls"....and then that was it, we drove up and down a road for 1/2 an hour trying to find a path, or a trail...nothing. A lot of time was wasted like that because we couldn't find half the stuff they mentioned.



My back actually never felt better. It was stiff, but that's to be expected. Pain wise it was all aces, no pain at all. I think it was because of all the swimming we did. We swam every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. I also think it was the mattresses we slept on as well because I woke up saturday morning at home and it was killing me again. I'm going to try to swim every night at my gym and see where that takes me.