Maui

 

When planning the trip to Hawaii, I had to decide which islands we'd visit, and how many days we'd spend on each one. One of the reasons we are spending the shortest amount of time on Maui compared to the other two islands we visited is because it is definitely more expensive. If we had another day here, I would have included the famous Road to Hana in our itinerary. In the end I only included beaches and Haleakala National Park (another volcano). On Friday evening while we were at a beach on Hawaii, I got a message saying that the vehicle we were going to be renting through Turo wasn't available after all due to mechanical difficulties. When I had searched months ago, the prices through Turo were better than through a rental car agency. At the last minute, Priceline offered me a better price than Turo, but as I had used $269 in gift cards to rent the vehicle through Turo, I went with the worse deal and selected another vehicle through Turo. The lesson I have learned here is that it's better to take a statement credit than to redeem for gift cards the majority of the time. If I had booked the van through Priceline, I would have felt obligated to use Turo in Europe in May, and that would have meant we would need to fly into London. Using those gift cards means I can be more flexible in picking the best flight deal for our next trip as we might fly into Dublin or some other city instead. I could have saved money by picking a vehicle located 1 mile away from the airport, but I remembered how much we did not like walking with our luggage to and from the airport on Oahu. Our Turo pick-up and drop-off was much easier on Hawaii as it took place in the airport parking lot. So, I paid a little more so that we could do the same on Maui. Our flight to Maui was really, really short. Only a few minutes passed after we reached our cruising altitude before it was time to start the descent. We spent more time in the airplane on the tarmac than in the air as it took a while for us to be able to deplane in Maui.

Kona Sea Salt Farm

Our first stop was at the Island Cream Co. for ice cream. I had read they had the best ice cream in all of Hawaii. They have more than 150 different flavors, and they make 36 flavors each day. Their island cream is a cross between gelato and ice cream. It was not cheap, but it was very, very tasty. I tasted a sample of ube (a purple sweet potato that is popular in Hawaii). Ube was good, but I chose lilikoi and pineapple cream for my two scoops. If we were staying longer on Maui, I felt quite confident we would have visited Island Cream Co. more than once. Most of the time we saved money by buying ice cream at a grocery store on this vacation. Our second stop was Kahekili Beach. The beaches on Hawaii sometimes didn't have any sand. There are some beaches on Maui that are rocky (no sand), but the beaches we went to had sand, which the kids were happy to see. After swimming and snorkeling there, we got our dinner at Round Table Pizza. Usually, getting pizza is a way to save money on vacation, but that is not always true in Hawaii. We went to three different pizza places on this trip, and only one of them had a 16-inch pizza, and the cost of one pizza (even though it was much smaller) was FAR more than what we pay for a pizza in Pennsylvania. To compensate for the smaller size of the pizza, sometimes I purchased an order of garlic knots or breadsticks. Paul liked the first pizza place the best - Black Rock Pizza in Kona. After dinner, we spent some time at Black Rock Beach. Paul and I watched the cliff diving ceremony. Our last stop before we checked into our Airbnb was to get some groceries for breakfast and lunch. Our unit is on the 5th floor. We have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Nadia is sleeping on the futon in the living room. There is an outdoor pool, but we didn't use it. This unit didn't include beach chairs, umbrellas, etc. like the Airbnb's on the other islands, but it did have a washer and dryer that we could use for free. It was nice to be able to do all our laundry so we can go back with clean clothes in our suitcases. I also appreciated the iron and ironing board so I could iron Nadia's dress before our family photo shoot.

On Sunday morning we walked to the beach that is five minutes from our Airbnb for photos. The last time we had a nice family photo shoot was in Myrtle Beach in 2019. The pictures this time aren't as good as the ones in 2019. First of all, Oliver seems to have lost the ability to smile. Secondly, Nadia and I accidentally ended up standing next to each other, which was not what I had in mind given the colors of our outfits, but there have been years that passed without us having taken even one single picture that included all five of us, so at least that is not the case this year. I have something to use for our Christmas card, ha ha! A couple from Canada who were on the beach, helped us by taking some of the photos. When we first arrived at the beach there was a rainbow over the water. It was SO beautiful, but my camera was acting up (scary!) and wouldn't work at first. Thankfully it started working again eventually, but the rainbow was gone by then. 

After our photo shoot, we got our bathing suits on and spent the day at the beach. Our first stop was Kapalua Beach. We spent about 90 minutes at that beach before walking to Napili Beach. If I had paid for all day parking instead of 3 hours of parking, I think we would have stayed there the rest of the day as the kids thought it was the best beach. We had trouble locating the other beach I had planned for us to try, so we ended up going to D.T. Fleming Beach which was a very good beach but not *quite* as good in the kids' opinion. Also, the parking at D.T. Fleming is much more expensive. If you go to Maui, we highly recommend the beach near the Napili Kai Beach Resort! When we were on Hawaii, we attempted to have shave ice, but the place I had chosen happened to be closed the day we went there (they had put a post-it note on the window saying they were closed that day). I had read so much about shave ice while planning this trip that I was determined that we wouldn't leave the state before we tried some. I found one only 1/2 mile from the D.T. Fleming Beach. This was even more expensive than our island cream treat. Gasp! But we had to try it once. We each tried different flavors of shave ice. Oliver had guava, passion fruit, and mango in his. The kids all picked vanilla for the ice cream portion of the treat. I picked haupia as I wanted to try something new. It definitely was better than a snow cone, but if I'm spending that much money, I'd rather have ice cream or a smoothie. I'm glad we tried it once though. It's challenging to find a place to eat on Maui that doesn't cost a fortune. At the Burger Shack on the beach this afternoon I saw that a burger cost $32! Yikes! We paid a lot less than that for our meals that we got at Mama's Ribs and Rotisserie.

Tomorrow, we plan to visit the Haleakala Volcano and some beaches that are closer to the airport before we begin our flight back home. Red eye flights are not exactly my favorite, and I'm also not keen on adjusting to a six-hour time difference, but I'm very, very grateful we could have this once in a lifetime trip to Hawaii. Nadia, Paul, and Ian said their favorite island of the three we visited was Hawaii (Big Island). Oliver said he liked them all equally. If we were to go on another beach vacation, we'd probably go to the Caribbean, but I'm so glad we were able to visit our 50th state! Nadia's astronomy class through Liberty University begins tomorrow, and Ian's two classes through Cedarville begin on Wednesday. Summer is quickly drawing to a close. 

The island in the background is Molokai