Day two in Maui kicked off with me eating/drinking a breakfast of a peanut butter and jelly (PBJ) sandwich, chased by sh*tty hotel coffee in our resort bungalow. Despite the cheap assed coffee, the coffee maker itself was pretty nice - decently large, with a 10 cup stainless steel pot, and quick to brew a batch of kickstarter fluid. I made a full pot, combining a filter bag of caffeinated coffee grounds with a filter bag of decaf for a richer, darker brew, despite a potentially diluted caffeine content. The PBJ sammie was one leftover from our travels the day prior, and it needed to be consumed. It was, as the saying goes, a "breakfast of champions."
Once Deborah was awake and abluted, we actually then visited the resort's main restaurant to assess its vegan offerings. As expected and predicted, there were very few and those were overpriced. Deborah had a $20 acai + granola + fruit bowl and I had $16 inflated dollars worth of fresh fruit (to be fair, it was high quality fruit, especially the pineapple).
"We should go to Safeway [a grocery store we knew was nearby because we had seen it on our drive to the resort from the airport] and get some actual meal fixings," I suggested. Deborah agreed. Our bungalow, as I believe I said in the prior Day One post, was equipped with a functional - albeit basic - kitchenette [stove/oven, fridge, sink, and a modest inventory of plates, bowls, and cutlery], and we'd likely save a bundle on meals by prepping our own food rather than eating out all the time.
After leaving the restaurant, we did a short walk on the beach and then reposited ourselves on some reclining beach chairs near the sea, after obtaining some beach towels from the resort's beachside towel station, to relax.
After a time, I asked Deborah, "Do you care if I go on a longer walk?" She did not care, nor did she care to join me. So, in due course, I set off on foot in what I believed to be a north-northwesterly direction along the beach. The surf was pretty active in the Pacific Ocean today, occasionally launching itself up the beach far enough to soak my feet and calves in brine. I was wearing "water sport" shoes, so this was not a problem in and of itself, but said water sport shoes did begin to take on a not insignificant load of sand. The surf activity was also amenable to surfing and I saw a number of surf boarders doing this activity farther up the beach from the resort.
Far ahead of me, I could see that the beach curved away to the right (north). My intent was to make it to a large building that appeared to demarcate this curvature, and in due course I achieved this. However, as I navigated my about face and return journey to the resort, I became a little bit lost, as I sought what I believed to be a paved "beach walk" behind the dunes that had - for the better part of my ambulations - paralled my trek up the beach. As it turned out, the beach walk path had apparently "petered out" at some point and did not appear to extend to where I was currently located, so after a bit of futile wandering around a labyrinth of hotel and resort areas, I eventually found my way back to said beach path and power walked back to where Deborah was still lounging by the beach. I had texted her to let her know I had gotten lost and was on my way back, so she would not worry, and she apparently had not worried, as a result.
Our intent for lunch was to find a vegan friendly cafe called the A'a Cafe, in a nearby strip mall, that our vegan friendly travel agent had suggested on our travel itinerary. We drove our rental car there and found it to be...closed on Wednesdays (the day of the week it just so happened to be). Luckily, we already had established a backup plan, and proceeded to another purportedly vegan friendly eatery called Miss Arepa, serving plant based (and conventional) Venezuelan arepas (by way of a quick stop at a coffee shoppe, where we scored a bag of fresh ground kona coffee beans for the aforementioned bungalow coffee maker, as well as chai and vanilla lattes for Deborah and me, respectively). Arepas are some sort of crispy fried corn fritter enclosing a variety of savory fillings, in our case pulled jackfruit (plant based "pulled pork"), rice, beans, mushrooms, plantains, and probably some other stuff. These were accompanied by both mild and hot sauces, in jars, to augment the flavorful foodstuffs. Indeed, it was very tasty grub, albeit a little too salty and oily.
We hit the Safeway after that and procured some additional foodstuffs for our dietary needs for the rest of the week, including some Beyond brand vegan burgers and faux chicken patties.
The remainder of the day comprised more beach rest and relaxation, during which we saw some humpbacked whales out in the bay, jumping and blowholing joyfully (presumably).
I believe I may have prepped a salad for dinner, which was no easy task without the kitchen amenities I am used to (and spoiled by) at home - like a salad spinner and a large stainless steal mixing bowl). Despite the limitations, the salad turned out well, repleat with wholesome ingredients, including greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, apples, vegan feta cheese, bowtie pasta, bell pepper, and perhaps a couple other ingredients I am forgetting right now. I dressed my bowl of salad with Brianna's vegan poppy seed dressing, whilst Deborah ate hers plain.
We got an early night, because on the morrow we would be getting up at the butt crack of dawn for a snorkeling excursion our travel agent had booked for us during pre-trip planning. Stay tuned for that travelogue post tomorrow!
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