Trip to Maui, Part 1
Hard to believe that it has been over a week to get the Maui visit up on the site. Needless to say, life since the trip has been crazy with work and lots of planing.
Thursday we headed to Maui for a long weekend. After our trip to Iceland and London, we were stuck on the runway close to four hours. United gave us each a $250 certificate towards a future flight. Since I thought it was a mistake, I thought we should use it. Originally, we were planning on weekend get-away, I thought, “I haven’t been to Hawaii, Miriam hasn’t been to Hawaii. Let’s go to Hawaii!” It didn’t take a lot of convincing to make it a four day weekend get-away.
Trip planning was way too easy. Then two weeks ago, the hotel announced that it was being foreclosed. Ah, but I prepaid for the room. This could be disastrous. A week later, the bank found a new management company, and the hotel remained open. Prepaying for the hotel saved us a load of money. Wanting to make this a special trip, I really wanted an Ocean view, which adds to the cost of the room dramatically. Less than a week before the trip, the weather reports took a turn for the worse. For awhile, it looked like rain for all four days while we there. As the trip drew closer, the reports improved enough that one day was going to be sunny.
As we were loading onto the plane, the flight attendants (or whatever they are called these days) held up boarding for a couple of minutes while the maintenance men got off the plane. By the time we reached our seats and settled, we had already received an email apologizing for the delay, and another $250 certificate. Not bad. A couple of cocktails later, we were landing in Maui.
We landed mid-afternoon in Hawaii. It gave us some time to rent the car, and head to the hotel. We wanted to check-in, change and grab a drink before we watched the sunset from the beach. The rental car agency took too long as expected. I surprised Miriam by renting a Jeep, and quickly learned that there is only one stretch of road in Maui that is over 45mph. No need to rent a sports car in Maui.
The front desk clerk at the Maui Prince Hotel, The Makena Beach and Golf Resort was extremely friendly, though asking a few too many questions.
“Just married?”
“No.”
“Celebrating an engagement?”
“No.”
“I am waiting for him to ask.”
“What are you waiting for? Are you going to propose? Lot’s of people come here to propose.”
You get the picture. Turns out that we were upgraded, and visions of full ocean view instead of partial ocean view filled my head. There are different levels of partial ocean view, I guess we were upgraded to the sunset side of the partial ocean view. What a view it was! After changing into proper, beach attire, we headed to the poolside bar where we met Lucky.
Before leaving for Maui, a friend commented that you don’t feel so good paying so much for stuff in Hawaii. Lucky enforced that. A couple of fruity Mai Tai’s, the juice based version and a half of pineapple worth of garnishes, I was feeling relaxed. We had plenty of time to get to the beach, dip our toes in the warm ocean and watch the sun set. We wanted to get up early to make it to the top of Haleakala for the sunrise. It is one of the those ‘must-see’ events in life. With jetlag, it would be easiest to do the first morning there.
Multiple alarms were set for a 3:30am departure. The trip to the summit is close to 2 hours from the hotel. Sunrise was at 6:15am. I have been looking forward to this for weeks! As soon as we hit the 3000ft elevation marker, we drove into the cloud. The cloud never ended. Arriving at the parking lot, a short distance to the overlook, we found the weather to be cold, wet and windy. With plenty of time to spare, we bundled up, and prepared for the event of a lifetime.
For the next hour, we stood in the cloud. Saw the cloud get lighter. Even got glimpses of the sky from time to time. No sunrise. Cold and wet, I forgot everything that I was going to say, dropped on one knee and proposed. Miriam said, “Yes!” After exchanging some warming kisses, I asked, “Are those tears of happiness? or just wet?” “Both…”
Soaked to the bone and probably starting down the road of hypothermia, we headed back to the Jeep. Yes, you can get cold on Maui. Before heading back down the Volcano, we realized that there was another summit, a couple of hundred feet higher. As we drove up the access road, the wind carried the cloud away. We were able to get the above the cloud feel briefly and then were rewarded with a 10,000ft overview of Maui. Glorious.
More to come… Road to Hana, Waterfalls, Luau’s…
