Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

Our last couple of days in Hawaii were quite eventful!

Friday, May 2 we spent most of the day at Kama’ole Beach in Kihei. Since there had been a couple of days of high surf advisories, we hadn't been able to swim or snorkel much. We slathered on the sunscreen and spent the day in the water and on the beach. We snorkeled a little bit, but the water was still pretty cloudy after the high surf. So we had a lot of fun taking turns on Ryan’s boogie board.

Cloud: Even though we all put on a lot of sunscreen, all of us got burned on our shoulders.

Silver lining: We didn’t really burn anywhere else, and are coming home with nice tans. :)

We went back to the condo, showered, slathered on the aloe and went to Lahaina for dinner. We had decided to go to Bubba Gump’s, and had to park several blocks away and walk. Frances and I were walking together a little bit ahead of everyone else. As we approached the block where the restaurant is, a man suddenly appeared right in front of us, flashed his FBI badge about 4 inches from our faces, and said, “Excuse me, ladies…FBI…I’m going to have to ask you to cross the street.” We did, and as we walked down the other side of the street, there were about a dozen FBI and INS agents questioning a whole bunch of people right outside the Bubba Gump kitchen entrance. We went in and were seated at a table right on the water with a gorgeous view. We had an Australian waiter (now a US National), who appeared distracted as he was taking our order. Obviously something was going on. Before long, we were informed that the INS had raided the restaurant, half of the kitchen staff had been taken away, and that they were closing the restaurant. We would still be served, but no one else would be let in. We were one of the last groups in. With most of the kitchen staff gone, the managers and some of the waiters were doing the cooking.

Cloud: Our food took FOREVER! By the time we got it, we were starving!
Silver lining: We sat there long enough to watch a beautiful sunset. More silver lining: They also gave us an extra entrée and took off half of the bill because of the inconvenience. We all decided that it was worth the wait and the excitement to get a cheap dinner. Oh yea, and it’s a great story for the blog!

Throughout the night, we had seen the manager, a woman in her mid-30’s, hugging employees and crying. I went up to her as we were leaving and told her how much we had enjoyed our meal, and that we had a very pleasant evening, despite everything they were dealing with. I thanked her for keeping us posted on what was happening, and thanked her for keeping everything running the best that she could. She started bawling and just mouthed “thank you” to me. We’d love to know when they were able to open again.

Saturday, May 3, we had to check out of our condo by 10:00 am, but our plane didn’t leave until about 8:00 pm. We drove north to the Iao Valley and hiked to the Iao Needle. It was cool, but we decided that we weren’t as awed by it as other busloads of people pulling up because of our experiences with similar amazing monoliths in our Utah parks.
Ryan had been singing “I wanna go back to my little grass shack” all day. The Iao Needle state park had a few trails that we took. On one trail was this little grass shack. We had to take a picture!
We then drove the rest of the way around the northwest part of Maui. There was a 12-ish mile stretch of road that was all one lane and very narrow, with steep cliffs all along. It was pretty nerve-wracking. But Frances and I had read in our guide book about the Olivene Pools – lava rocks with calm pools of water right out into the pounding surf. We HAD to see them! They were beautiful, but since we had already packed our bags and dressed to go home, none of us swam in them. We just enjoyed hiking down to them and around them.
Cloud: Extremely scary road with crazy drivers. We were all stressed and had motion sickness by the time we got to the end.
Silver Lining: Beautiful pools and views. And “the best banana bread on the planet” according to our guidebook. (And pretty yummy dried coconut and dried mangoes, too.) We turned in our rental cars and went to the airport in Kahului. It was a zoo! Marc and Frances opted to go through the regular check-in line, while the rest of us let the porter/sky cap check us in. We were a little concerned that the porters just kept stacking bags on carts, and didn’t seem to be taking them anywhere. We explained that we were flying to Honolulu, with a connection to Salt Lake City, and asked if our bags would make it. We were assured that they would.

We flew to Honolulu, then on home. It is a 6 ½ hour flight. It was all night, but none of us really slept well. We landed just before 8:00 am, and went to get our bags. The carousel kept going around and around, with no sign of any of our bags. When the conveyor belt stopped, we knew it was a bad sign. We reported our missing bags to the baggage office, and were assured that they would locate them and deliver them to us. As of the time of this post, we are all still missing our bags.

Cloud: All six of our bags are somewhere between Kahului, Maui and Salt Lake City.
Silver Lining: We didn’t have to unpack yet! We came home and slept for several hours to try to make up for no sleep last night.

Even though there were a few unexpected glitches, we had an amazing time together. With Frances and Marc’s twins due in a few short months, we’re not sure when we’ll be able to do a vacation together like this again. We had a wonderful time, and made a lot of fun memories.