Lauren here. Lloyd and I are not doing well in our coordinating of information. Here is his write-up of a couple of days ago.
Lauren out.
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If you’d like to read about Maui Day Three, Brad has a nice write up.
Today started out like every other day in Maui with a refreshing morning walk on the beach. I’ve done this enough that I recognize some of the other people who walk on the beach at the same time I do (about 5:30am). One guy I’ve stopped and talked to twice now is interesting. He’s from Denmark and retired to Maui about 5 years ago. I can’t recall his name, but he said it means ocean (I have to way to verify this). I suspect I will see him tomorrow as well.
I got back to Brad’s about 7:00 and Samith had been up since 3:00am working. I’m not really sure when Samith sleeps. He is always up when I go to bed and usually up when I get up. I had a traditional Hawaiian breakfast of Special K Red Berry and when 8:00 rolled around we went snorkeling.
Brad’s fellow teacher Paul and Paul’s brother Jim took us snorkeling. They are really great people and it was good to go with people who knew that they were doing (and who had equipment that we could borrow).
Snorkeling started out poorly for me. Everyone else had experience snorkeling and I think Paul thought that I did as well. I thought I made it readily apparent from my ineptness that I had not, but when were were all done and eating lunch he was surprised and said that wasn’t a great spot to do your first snorkeling.
But it was a great spot to snorkel, and by the time we were nearly finished I was no longer worried that I would die with each passing moments. This was sort of a new experience for me. I’m more used to convincing other people to do things that they are scared to do rather than being the reluctant participant. Samith did a nice job of making sure I was still alive and I would probably have turned back if it wasn’t for him. One of the first fish I saw looked up at me with a look that seemed to say, “Dude, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” I’m not sure if that look was meant for me specifically or if he gave it to all the snorkelers.
But I did eventually figure out, more or less, what I was doing. And even while I was terrified, everything was beautiful and interesting. Just about the time I was scared I was going to die we saw a sea turtle. They are really amazing. Jim touched it, and I think Brad got really close too.
There were some underwater tunnels and Paul and Jim swam through them. I didn’t realize that the hole I was looking into was a tunnel, and I was more than a little surprised when Paul came swimming out of it. Samith purchased a disposable camera in a waterproof case so there should be some snorkeling pictures tomorrow.
We snorkeled for a couple of hours then went out to eat at a fish place. It was very good (Brad has not yet steered us wrong on eating establishments). I had the Fish Tacos, because they were the specialty of this little shop. The owner came out and explained the 17 ingredients in the taco and how to best eat it. The advice was necessary.
After that we headed off for the mandatory shave ice followed by the mandatory afternoon nap.
In the afternoon we drove up the Iao valley which is right up the road from Brad’s school. Surprisingly, he had never been there before. It was a beautiful rain forest. There are other parts of Maui that are rain forests, but we have not been there yet. We will probably go back up the valley when Curt gets here. He’s more of a hiker than Samith is. Instead, we walked around about a mile of paved trail. It was nice that Brad knew a lot about plants, because we saw a lot of them. We saw both a cat and a chicken.
The evening was finished up with another wonderful meal (this time at an Asian noodle place) after which we went to Costco to drop off Samith’s film. We will pick up the film tomorrow and then I can put up some snorkeling pictures.
In the mean time, here are the rest of today’s pictures. Oh, and I washed my colors and whites together and now have pink underwear and socks.
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Lauren here again. At the time of this writing, Curt is well on his way to Maui. Happy traveling!
