Travelogue Day 3 - Snorkeling Misadventure

Getting up at the butt crack of dawn was not as hard as I had expected, and I attribute this to the time zone difference between Hawaii and Wisconsin. Hawaii is four hours earlier than Wisconsin, and so 4:30 AM in Maui (when I got up) equated to 8:30 AM in Madison WI (later than I would typically get up). My jet lag was slowly recalibrating to the new time zone, but had not yet fully stabilized, which worked in my favor for getting up a bit earlier than Deborah to prep a quick bungalow breakfast before we headed out at 5:30 AM toward the Pacific Whale Foundation (PWF) enterprise that would facilitate a couple rounds of snorkeling on Hawaiian "reefs" today.

I would recount the excursion in more detail, if it had exceeded expectations. But it did not, despite me setting those expectations very low. I would give the total endeavor about a C or C+ (with the plus being for the fact that they attempted to accommodate our vegan diet). We signed in at the PWF establishment and then boarded a small ferry that would transit us to the snorkeling sites. The first "reef" site had a plethora of colorful fish, but the waters there were choppy and rough, and there were too many people in the water - notwithstanding the "small group" snorkeling activity that it was marketed to be - making it cumbersome to get about. There had been some promises made by the PWF and boat crew of potential green turtle sightings at the second snorkel site, which we proceeded to in short order, but these promises were shattered when the turtles decided not to show up. The waters were calmer at the second snorkel site, but there was very little to see, even fewer colorful fish.

Back at the PWF establishment, after exiting the boat, we bought a few overpriced souvenirs at their gift shoppe, in lieu of tipping the staff (since tip worthy services had not been rendered to our expectations, in my view, and staff had over sold it). When we left the parking area of the PWF, we discovered a parking ticket on the windshield, indicating that we had parked illegally without paying some sort of parking fee. I was infuriated by this, because there had been no observable signage about this in the lot (I determined later that there was signage, but it was not "observable" at the dark, pre-dawn time of our arrival). But we paid the $21 fine regardless, because refusing to do so would purportedly, according to the fine print of the ticket, bring down a world of pain on us if we ever parked in that lot ever again EVER (which we were slated to do tomorrow, for a whale watching excursion led by the PWF).

The snorkeling had ended around noon, and we had driven back to the resort, where we spent the afternoon once again lounging by the beach and going on a short two mile walk along down the same beach path I had explored yesterday.

I made us a dinner of salad (again) and a leftover arepas bowl before we watched some entertaining shows on Deborah's tablet and then retired.

Tomorrow would theoretically comprise a morning and early afternoon of idle tropical lounging before returning to the PWF for said whale watching tour. I set my expectations lower still for the whale watching, if it were to be anything like the snorkeling, and hoped for the best.

Stay tuned!

Travelogue Day 2 - Getting Oriented

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!

Travelogue Day 1 - In Transit

"Gina!" I chirped, my voice cutting through the gentle din of Gate 6 at the Madison airport as I tested my hypothesis that the woman who had just entered the gate area with a younger female traveling companion was, in fact, a long time acquaintance and past band mate, one Gina Rehm.

The woman looked up and over at us at the sound of my voice, confirming my surmise, and a look of recognition spread across her face as she took in the visages of Deborah and me.

"Oh, my gosh...HI!" said Gina.

"Wow, you know everyone," said Gina's traveling companion.

"Oh, I know, honey, it's OK," Gina said, patting her companion on the shoulder before heading toward us.

Gina bantered with us a spell. She was also flying to Denver on the same flight as us, en route to Sacramento for the unfortunate funeral of the grandfather of her traveling companion, who turned out to be Gina's niece, who we'll call Samantha for lack of recall of her actual name and perhaps to anonymize the innocent.

It should be noted at this point that I almost never see people I know at the airport, despite Madison Wisconsin being a fairly small city, as city sizes go.

This episode punctuated the initial stages of the tropical adventure for which this travelogue is intended to document AND also set the general tone of laid back ease that I hoped to manifest for the entire week ahead. Prior to the random encounter with Gina our morning had proceeded as most mornings preambling air travel typically do. We woke up earlier than we normally would have on most weekdays (this being a Tuesday), abluted, dressed, and downed whatever sustenance we deemed necessary for burling through the cumbersome American air transportation system.

We were bound for Maui Hawaii, via Denver. Once through the anxiety stage of TSA Security - which was fairly minimal as state-sponsored anxieties go - and immersed in the relative safety of the airport concourse, we relaxed somewhat.

"Can we choose to live in the universe in which everything goes perfectly smoothly on this trip?" I asked Deborah. She nodded her acceptance of the proposal and, mentally, we set about structurally reorienting the Cosmos to our desires. We filled our water bottles and I procured a cup of coffee from the overpriced Ancora coffee shoppe in the airport concourse, slowly sipping it as we awaited our departure.

Both flights were on time and proceeded smoothly and without incident. So anxiety-free was I that I didn't even notice the first flight had landed until the plane's wheels touched down on the tarmac at Denver International. In fact, when it did, I thought initially it was just unexpected turbulence. But there you go!

We had about a two hour layover in Denver before boarding the flight to Kaluhui on Maui in Hawaii. En route from Concourse A (where we landed) to Concourse B (where our second flight would depart from), we passed a smoothie place that we had researched ahead of time and hoped to stumble upon without too much effort, per our earlier intentional prayer to the Cosmos. We procured a couple fruit smoothies and sipped the wholesomeness of them into our bodies at the departure gate.

I'm not gonna lie, the seven hour flight from Denver to Maui was a marathon of patience. I spent the time listening to audio books, reading an actual book, and formulating the initial paragraphs of this post. We were served a vegan meal on this flight, per our request during booking of the United Airlines flights. As modern society has not embraced the awesomeness of veganism yet, it was sparse and average quality fare (but I commend their effort). Anticipating this, however, we had packed some snacks and PB&J sammies in our carry on bags, the latter of which we consumed to supplement our nutritional needs.

The landing in Maui was smooth and upon exiting the plane, Deborah and I changed into climate-appropriate attire (shorts, tee shirts, and sandals) that we had also had the foresight to stash in our carry ons. We scored our suitcases from baggage claim and mosied over to the rental car station to get our transportation for the week, a Chevy something-or-other midsized sedan from Enterprise. On the way out of Kaluhui, we stopped at a Whole Foods grocery store and secured a stash of...well...whole foods. We would be staying in a bungalow at a resort in Lahaina Maui HI (the Royal Lahaina Resort and Bungalows, in fact) about 45 minutes drive from the airport, and said bungalow was (we were told) equipped with a full kitchenette. We planned to make some of our own meals during the vacation week, to ensure vegan fare and also cut costs on dining out (point of fact: bowl of assorted fruit at the resort restaurant = $16!!!). We got some stir fry and salad fixings, as well as some fruit, cereal, and snacks.

On the drive to Lahaina, I was surprised to see that one can see the neighboring islands of Lanai and Moloka'i from Maui. I did not realize they were so close or so visible. And perhaps they aren't that close...but they are mountainous and thus rise well above the horizon established by the curvature of the Earth, appearing - perhaps deceptively - to be nearby.

We found the resort on the west coast of Maui with minimal difficulty and checked in. Our bungalow was some distance from the main entrance to the resort. So we had to park the rental car in the guest parking lot near the entrance and then a bellhop drove us, our bags, and our groceries to our bungalow in a large golf cart. The bellhop pointed out some of the various resort amenities that typical resort guests care about, en route. As atypical guests, we made note of the ice machine and water dispenser, and paid less heed to the bars and live music options. Live music and bars are totally fine and sometimes even good and desirable, but they were not our priorities on this tropical vacation. Our priorities were primarily relaxation, sunshine, and more relaxation, punctuated by some good plant based eats from time to time, and of course HYDRATION. We also prioritized beach walks by the Pacific Ocean (a large body of water that is hard to miss no matter where you are in Hawaii). Beach walks would likely be my main source of exercise on this trip.

Once in our bungalow, we unpacked and put the groceries away. Deborah was pretty pooped from all the day's travel and relaxed on the bed. Marginally more motivated and energized, I set about making a small dinner of sauteed tofu and potatoes, which we ate before retiring for a deep and restful sleep. It was only about 9 pm Hawaii time when we got done with the meal. But that equates to 1 am and FAR PAST OUR BEDTIME in the time zone of Wisconsin, from whence we came.

That being said, I woke up at about 6 am Hawaii time (10 am Wisconsin time) the next morning, feeling very well rejuvenated and (hopefully) jet lag free. The adventures of our first FULL DAY in Hawaii will be recounted in tomorrow's installment of this travelogue.

Stay tuned!