Travelogue Day 7 - The Final Countdown

Today was slated to be the last FULL DAY of our tropical vacation to Maui Hawaii. However, in the wee hours of the morning, we mutually decided to make it our last partial day in Hawaii and head home to Wisconsin a day earlier than planned, due to sh*tty weather precluding the maximum possible level of desired fun.

Deborah rebooked our flights out of Kahului Maui Hawaii. They were pretty much the same flights as before, just 24 hours earlier. There was a bit of finegling with United Airlines customer service, due to some perceived (and actual) overcharges on the new flights. But Deborah handled all that malarkey. I handled cooking and/or eating most of the remaining leftovers, and there were A LOT OF THEM. I made tofu steaks, to use up the remaining tofu. I ate one of the four remaining vegan burgers, but to eat any more than that would have overstuffed me, on top of the baseline cereal and fruit with soy milk, that I did consume. I had to trash the bulk of the stir fry that I made last night. I did not feel too bad about that. Deborah said it was one of my best stir fries, and that may have been due to the garam masala seasoning I used to flavor it (gives it a sweeter flavor profile than straight curry seasoning, due to garam masala's cinnamon and cardamom components). Deborah likes a sweeter edge on her food. I thought it was a fairly average stir fry, because I favor more savory spices. But it is what it is, as they say.

We both showered, packed our bags, and headed for the lobby of the resort to check out. The resort staff were persnickety in their refusal to grant us any rebates or reductions of our fees, due to leaving a day early. I'm not sure why, because this only hurts them from a marketing standpoint. The money they retain by shorting us doesn't make up for the revenue they'll lose when people ask us about our trip and we don't actively sing their praises (which we would do if they cut us some slack). Profits are not the be all end all in this modern age of online travel reviews (and this one is read FAR AND WIDE!). The good news for them is that they can remedy this AT ANY TIME. Whilst we shant speak ill of them, because they did provide us with ample accommodations and amenities, neither will we actively praise and recommend them above and beyond any other Maui resort unless and until they equitably compensate us. They get to profit from the bungalow we vacated by "double dipping" for the night we did not spend there and renting it out to another patron, which they no doubt will. They should recompense us for some of that "pure profit margin." They may not, and that will play out as it plays out, based on what I said above.

After checkout, we put our bags in the rental car and headed toward Kahului, where we would fly out of Maui's main airport (OGG) there later in the evening. We stopped at a pleasant seaside park en route and sat at a picnic table there, taking in the scenic and misty mountains of the island's interior on one side and to Pacific Ocean shoreline on the other. The park had a large number of feral chicken families - hens, roosters, and young chicks - scrabbling out a subsistence lifestyle. The cocks (roosters) were very colorful.

We proceeded on to Kahului, in search of a purported vegan food truck. We found the food truck lot and it was full of food trucks...but not the particular vegan one we sought. So we ended up going to a nearby Thai place with vegan friendly options. It was an interesting establishment, with a lot of 70s and 80s themed artwork and paraphenalia. We then stopped at a coffee shoppe to chillax for a bit, since it was still early afternoon and we did not need to drop of the rental car and check in at the airport for quite a while. But in due course, we did drive to the airport, drop off the car, and check in for our United Airlines flight. We glided through TSA Pre Check fairly expediently and the only snag was when we got our bags scanned for agricultural sh*t and apparently the tangerines I had in my carry on were a no no. I put them in the trash.

We filled our water bottles en route to our departure gate and then settled in at said gate to relax and mentally prep for the marathon of air travel ahead. We would be taking the "red eye" back to the mainland, but since it was only a six hour flight, the maximum possible amount of sleep we could get would be about four hours, and that was optimistic.

That being said, everything did go pretty well. We landed in Denver early in the morning, after the red eye flight. We had dozed a little bit on the plane, but not nearly enough, which was within expectations. We got vegan smoothies at Freshens in the Denver airport and drank them at our gate for the Madison flight, which departed a few hours later and was relatively uneventful. Upon arrival in Madison, after collecting our bags from baggage claim, we got lunch at the Green Owl vegan/vegetarian cafe. My goal was to push through the rest of the day and reset my biological clock with a good night of sleep. Deborah opted for a massive power nap in the afternoon. Either way, we got back into the swing of things pretty expediently.

I am not going to lie, it was a bit of an anticlimactic tropical vacation. Don't get me wrong, it WAS a vacation. But...Hawaii owes us three days of sunshine and tropical breezes.

Travelogue Day 6 - Chocolate Denied

I woke up to find a text on my phone from the chocolate farm/factory indicating that the planned tour of said farm/factory was - as expected - canceled due to unsafe weather conditions. High winds and rain are slated to pound the Hawaiian Islands for the next two days, before easing up on the day of our departure.

This news necessited some flexing of expectations and plans for the day. That being said, the morning played out in its fairly predictable and expected formula. I prepped us a breakfast of toast, cereal with fruit, and (for me) coffee. We farted around in the mid morning - Deborah reading and me catching up on podcast episodes I had gotten behind on.

Deborah proposed that we revisit the A'a Roots vegan cafe for lunch and so we prepped to foray out into the inclement weather. It was windy, but the rain had dissipated substantially since morning. We drove our rental car to the mini mall where A'a Roots was located. I ordered a vegan tofu curry bowl with veggies (the cauliflower was superb) and Deborah got a vegan bagel sandwich. We shared a vegan blueberry muffin as an appetizer and a tropical açai bowl for dessert. While eating, we noticed the cafe was selling tee shirts promoting a place called Honolua Bay. We did not buy a shirt, but we googled this particular bay and found that it was fairly close by and a popular snorkeling area. The weather was not conducive to any snorkeling, but we decided to check out the area anyway.

After stopping at the small market next to A'a Roots for some additional soy milk, we drove to Honolua Bay. It had a tiny parking area overlooking a very scenic bay and ocean view. There were some surfers braving the weather on the west side of the bay where some large waves were breaking. We snapped a few pics and then sought out a coffee shoppe, landing on the Bad Ass Coffee shoppe, where I got an oat milk latte.

We returned to the resort bungalow where Deborah turned on the Super Bowl (yawn!) peripherally, and I caught up on traveloguing and podcasts.

Then some EXTREME BOREDOM set in. I am the type of person who needs to stay physically and mentally active at the peak of the day. I can wind down and chillax in the later evening hours, but find that almost impossible to do in the early afternoon. The weather precluded doing much externally, so I was relegated to being stuck with my thoughts and it was kind of a bit of a downer.

However, I survived by making completely unnecessary culinary creations, most notably a stir fry to use up the excess tofu and veggies we had scored at Whole Foods earlier in the week. Deborah helped allay some boredom by pulling up some TV shows and movies that we watched. I also was not feeling the greatest physically. I think I picked up a respiratory bug from the snorkeling gear during our snorkeling excursion toward the start of our trip. I felt like I had "water on the lungs" and was coughing incessantly.

"Maybe we should leave a day early," I proposed to Deborah. We discussed this option and ultimately agreed to that, but did not execute until the following morning, after some email correspondence with our travel agent to ensure this was both feasible AND wise. It was...

Stay tuned!

Travelogue Day 5 - Taking it Real Easy Like

Today kicked off with no wake up alarms and no agenda items or specific goals to accomplish. When I awoke around 7 AM, Deborah and I spent some time engaging in "snuggles," before I eventually got all the way up and prepped us a breakfast of the usual toast, cereal, and fruit, embellished with some tasty kona coffee for myself (while listening to a bit of Ezra Klein's newest podcast episode on the ruining of the Internet by corporate interests).

It was raining a bit. Thus, the only foray into the outside world that I executed was a short walk to the resort's outdoor water dispensary to replenish my water bottle with osmotically purified and ionically enhanced (or whatever) water. After that, Deborah and I retired to the porch of our bungalow to read (her) and write (me) for a spell. I used this time to get caught up on these travelogue posts. After a time, the rain worsened, exacerbated by increased wind that blew raindrops into the porch area, so we retired to the interior of the bungalow to continue our respective reading and writing activities.

"Should we check out that A'a Roots Cafe place for lunch today?" I asked Deborah.

"Yeah," she replied, with no firming of details. 

So that got loosely added to the day's laid back agenda, and as noon neared, we geared up for a hopeful and positive lunch excursion.

"Let's also hit that grocery store near the cafe for some more cereal and whatever," I said. I had predicted we would encounter a shortage of morning victuals soon, and this would solve that conundrum. Deborah assented.

We farted around a little more and then at about noon, we donned rain gear (I wore a rain slicker and wrapped a resort beach towel around my waste to keep my shorts dry) and headed out. We drove the rental car to the nearby strip mall that housed the A'a Roots Cafe. The A'a Roots Cafe turned out to be 100% all vegan, not just vegan friendly. This filled us with glee and we ordered a bunch of tasty food...probably too much...and ate it at the cafe, which had a number of small tables and other seating in the small space. I had a delicious strawberry scone that I shared with Deborah and she shared a blueberry muffin with me. My main meal was a tofu scramble bowl, embellished with black rice and a side salad. I believe Deborah had a huge black bean tostada dish. Before leaving A'a Roots, I got a healthy smoothie and a cold brewed coffee, and Deborah got a freshly baked s'mores cookie, all of it to go.

I left Deborah in the car to eat her s'mores cookie as I went into the small grocery store in the mini mall to get a few things, including some cereal and granola, bananas, vegan ice cream, Triscuits, and an onion (for a future planned stir fry).

When I returned to the car, Deborah was "sugar sick" from eating the s'mores cookie on top of her giant lunch. I drove us back to the resort where she promptly collapsed on the bed to digest via power nap. I listened to podcasts and wrote a bit more, until I started to get bored.

"What do you think about going to the fitness room?" I asked Deborah when she woke up. She was on the fence, but leaning toward yes. So, we went to the fitness room and did a short 30 minute workout. They had Peloton bike trainers there, so I spent my 30 minutes on that, whilst Deborah split her time between bike and core work using an exercise ball.

When we got back to the bungalow after exercising, I realized I forgot my phone in the fitness room, so I jogged back over there and - thankfully - found it where I had left it in one of the water bottle cages on the bike. I was relieved.

Dinner was leftover salad. We chillaxed watching some TV before bed.

Tomorrow is slated to comprise a midday tour of a chocolate farm and factory, but the weather is slated to comprise high winds and rain, so we think the tour might get canceled by the purveyors of it. If we don't do the chocolate excursion, we will probably revisit the vegan A'a Roots Cafe for some vegan eats, because they were really good.

Stay tuned!