November 3-8, 2011 - Maui, Hawaii

My friend Kylee and I took a girl's trip to Maui this year.  We stayed at the Westin Maui Resort and had a really great long weekend.  

Our first day we took the shuttle to Lahaina and walked around the town for a bit to window-shop, see the Banyan tree and the old prison (Hale Pa-ahao).  We took a drive out to Honalua Bay, rented snorkeling gear for the weekend and then drove back to our resort to enjoy the water.  We went down the beach to Black Rock and snorkeled around there.  Kylee and I figured out we need to work on our under-water signals.  I’m not a big water person to begin with and then as we’re snorkeling she starts pointing to something behind me (which of course I take to mean a shark or something – ha), and when I turn around it’s a gigantic turtle.  Pretty cool!  After some good time in the water we then sat on the Ka'anapali Beach and watched the sunset.  There were a few restaurants within walking distance of our hotel and that night we ate at Hula Grill.  

The next day we drove to the Haleakala summit.  Such amazing views from the top at 10,023 feet elevation!   What a contrast it was up there from the hot weather at the beach to the cold air at the summit. That night we got dressed up and went to the Old Lahaina Luau.  It's definitely something you need to experience once.  We actually had a great time - good food and good entertainment – and our waiter was definitely not bad to look at!

The following day we decided to take an R&R day.  We hung out at the resort pool, enjoyed some more snorkeling, and just took it easy.  At sunset we watched the Sunset Torch Lighting at Black Rock, and then went back to the Hula Grill for dinner.  They had this chili-oil dip with their bread that we were just craving again!

On the next morning we got up early and set out in our car to drive the Road to Hana.  Kylee was in charge of the guidebook, I navigated the fun winding roads, and we stopped at all of the waterfalls and lookout spots we could find.  That was a fun day!  Some of our stops included the Kaumahina State Wayside lookout, Three Bears Falls, hiking up the Wailua Iki Trail to the Falls at Wailua Iki, Lower fall at Pua'a Ka'a State Park, and then the highlight was hiking up the very muddy trail to the Upper fall at Pua'a Ka'a State Park.  We met up with a couple other people also trying to find the upper fall, and finally after some very good instructions in the guidebook we made it there.  We decided to get in the water and swim to the falls - and on my goodness...that water was absolutely freezing!!!  We swam to the falls, snapped a picture and swam back as fast as we could!  So much fun!   After that experience we continued on our way and stopped at Hanawi Falls, enjoyed the amazing coastline view from Nahiku Road and finally made it to Black Sand Beach.  It was getting late afternoon by that point and I didn't want to be on that winding road at dark, so we turned around at that point.    We made it back to our hotel and grabbed dinner at Leilani's.

On our last day we drove around the island to meet up with our Molokini Snorkeling Tour.  We boarded our boat and enjoyed a great tour of the island - seeing west Maui, the Maui South Coast beach, Haleakala and finally getting a great show from the dolphins.  We made our way over to Molokini Crater and snorkeled for a while.  We then got back on the boat and they took us to Turtle Bay for some more snorkeling.  It took a while but we finally came across some of the huge turtles.  One came up for air right in front of me - so cool!   What a great end to a great vacation. 
  
Check out some more photos from my trip here - Maui Photos