Hawa-i-i & Thanksgiving! - Phase 1 - The landing, the sighting and aha, that setting!

This phase is my favorite. (no wait, I think Phase 2 was. no, I dont know. ok, I give up. I loved all of them :| )

Day #1 - Thursday
We also had a lot of those "aha" moments on our trip. Aha#1: We couldn't reserve seats ahead, but because we were on the same reservation, they put us together and upgraded us to a Premium Economy seats (:D) with a window. We were flying even before we started flying. :\

The actual moment set in as soon as we boarded the Hawaiian Airlines flight and the hostess greeted us with an "Aloha" - yes, that was basically where it all started - the Hawaiian saga of our lives.

The magazine teasing us with what lies ahead

The screens playing Hawaiian music

Kokua = help (sorta, read this for deets)

Bye-Bye SFO, Aloha ocean?!! We'll come back soon, hopefully!

And then, until we were 10 minutes away from the destination, our view looked pretty much like:

At T-10, it changed - our first sighting!

And we landed.

You get the Hawaiian vibe the moment you land - the airport looks super rustic, kinda like a bus station in remote India, IYKWIM.

We went to pick up our car next. And looked for some upgrades. We found all compacts/intermediates/full size vehicles - no real upgrade worthy vehicles (I'd craved for a convertible when we were originally reserving the car, but had to compromise for economic reasons).
We picked a car and just when we were driving out, we sighted a Mustang convertible drive into the lot and our hearts started beating 10x faster. We spoke to the guy and we got it!!! (Aha#2)

look at that beauteeeh! (we did better photography later)

We were hungry by then. Went ahead and looked at yelp places. "Thai Me Up!" was a popular food truck, we wanted to try but given it's thanksgiving, nothing we wanted was open. 

We drove around Kahului looking for places one after the other on Yelp and were disappointed. 

Finally, found a whole foods store and got in there to grab some food - 30$ for 2 small salads. -_- That was unnecessarily pricey. 

Tip#1: "Do NOT go to wholefoods when in Hawaii"

30$ for that - seriously wholefoods??

Destination#1: Iao Valley state park and Waihee Ridge trail

We wanted to spend the rest of the day on the central/western side, thus paying respects to the customary "needle" of Maui and head to Lahaina by the night

The Needle, Iao Valley State Park

Struck by the Maui Greens

We met some interesting acquaintances on the way.

Hi Mr.Pea & family

Aloha Horsie

And there was Mr.Moo, Birdies and etc. We bade them all a farewell and headed to our home for the night at Hyatt, Lahaina. 

We also found a juice truck on the way!! (Olowalu Juice Stand) and had fresh pineapple and sugarcane juices. YUM. but we realized later that this was a bait for tourists - so overpriced, OMG. 

There are so many other options, serving the same stuff for a much better price. Don't get fooled like us if you are there next. 

Until the next phase, 

Mahalo!

Shamp