We took a little puddle-jumper over to Maui, our last island, on Friday morning.  Just a 9 seat prop-plane and we had our requisite exciting moment of a sudden drop in altitude, but that was far out-weighed by mom’s squeals of joy of seeing several whales cruisin’ in the waters below us.

Mom twisted my arm into renting a convertible so we piled into a Jeep Wrangler (good thing we’re traveling carry- on!) and set out for West Maui.  We’re staying in the Kaanapali area at another hotel/timeshare complex.  Our roomy studio comes with a full kitchen, and lush tropical garden view.  As expected, our room wasn’t ready till 3pm so we had lunch at Whaler’s Village, then sat suntanning by the pool with dulcet tones of the shuffleboard tourney serenading us in the background.

The next morning we were up and out pre-coffee for the short drive north to check out the Napili Kai resort, where my parents used to stay years ago.  The hotel was in good nick but Sheila was stunned at all the new developments that have popped up the the intervening 40 years since her last visit: NK used to be at the end of the road, now the pineapple plantation has given way to a dozen resorts and a golf course!

We returned ‘home’ to prep for the day, put the top down on our Jeep and headed south.  We drove down to Kihei; first to check out where our friend Ann stays when she visits every April, and the further south to have lunch at the Grand Wailea Resort, where we all wish we could stay when we visit :). It was all very posh and elegant, from the lei greeting to the tiny bottles of chilled water left in our valet-parked car.  It was also huge!  We had to ask for directions twice to find the poolside bistro.  Service was top-notch – they didn’t even bat an eye when mom ordered a grilled cheese sandwich to go with her fancy wine for lunch!

We had to hurry back as we had booked a sunset cruise out of Lahaina harbour. Plenty of drinks, fancy pupus, beautiful sunset and over 350 pictures of whales.  Need I say more?

Sunday, our day of rest, saw us up at 5:45am and on our way to Hana.  The famous road is not for the faint- of-heart (or queasy stomach) as it has over 600 curves in 50 miles (one way!).  We were amply prepared with a full tank of gas and a picnic lunch but the weather did disappoint – light rain fell for most of the journey.  We were consoled with the roadside waterfalls we did see, knowing we had already seen some spectacular ones earlier on our trip, and navigating the road was a lot of fun (Sheila did a spectacular job!).

 The rain stayed over on the wet side of the island so we piled (literally after 12 days of vay-cay!) into our swimsuits and spent our last afternoon at the beach. And we actually went for a swim !!