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

Hawa-i-i & Thanksgiving! - Phase 0 - The Planning

Time for a life status update - I've graduated to an Mrs now. (micdrop, ha!)

Husband & I realized we never got to go on a "honeymoon", so it was time to make plans for one. Also factoring that we didn't plan a vacation in ages, we decided to get on it for the Thanksgiving holiday this year and call it it.

There's a ton of places to consider - and given our contrasting opinions - it took a while to freeze on one. After a lot of debates, googling, weather lookups, one or two fights - we finalized Maui, HI. The flights were expensive, but not exorbitant. Although November wasn't considered a great month to visit cuz the rains, Maui(or Hawaii in general) is so well-structured geographically that, there's always a sunny side on the island. Mind blowing, eh? Same here, until I actually saw that with my eyes from the flight the day we landed.

Maui's geography is a stunner - it has mountains consisting of the Haleakala crater, clear, warm beaches, thick tropical forests, vegetation, grasslands - oh, you name it, you have it.

Our Maui trip went through certain phases and I'll summarize each in a post.

• Phase 0: The Planning
• Phase 1: The landing, the sighting and aha, that setting! 
• Phase 2:  WAAAAAATTTT-ERRR
• Phase 3: Do we have to go back?

Phase 0: The Planning

In a gist: there were lists, lists of lists and then, there were none.
This is literally how our planning phase progressed.

I had a "Maui: To Book", 2 "Maui: Potential things to do", 2 "Maui", 1 "Maui: Itinerary" which had multiple sublists and an email that listed out these itineraries to the Husband. We pondered over what to do, when to do what, and how to fit all of it in - lots of research, asking around (I literally asked everyone in my office if they went and what they did if they did go - ofcourse, my office everyone is about 10 people, so.) Anyway, I really wanted to see all of it and make the maximum of going there.

We had about 4.5 days in Maui to be precise.

Our original itinerary looked somewhat like this:

Thursday: 

Iao Valley State Park, Waihee Ridge Trail, explore Kahului.

Halt in Kahului for the night

Friday:

Early morning head to Haleakala Summit

Head to Lahaina

Saturday:

Start to Hana
Pua'a Ka'a State Wayside

Waianapanapa State Park

Go around Kipahulu, Pipiwai Bamboo Trail

Any other trails

Halt around Keokea or Kula

Sunday/Monday:

Chill

Halt at Lahanai/Kapalua

And then realized we missed the biggest part of going to Hawaii - Water stuff.
Our itinerary then looked like this:

Thursday: 

Iao Valley State Park, Waihee Ridge Trail, explore Kahului.

Halt in Kahului for the night

Friday:

Start to Hana
Pua'a Ka'a State Wayside

Waianapanapa State Park

Go around Kipahulu, Pipiwai Bamboo Trail

Any other trails

Halt around Keokea or Kula

Saturday:

Early morning head to Haleakala Summit for Sunrise

Stay in an AirBnB in Wailea 

Sunday:

Molokini Snorkeling

Head back to Lahaina
See a Luau

Monday:

Breakfast 

Head out to Airport

Looking at this in the map, we realized our total driving time was about 5-6 hours per day.
And that we didn't have the time to sit on the beach and read our books or chill in a fancy resort - and that this was important for our vacation.

So here is what we did after that thought.
Booked Hyatt in Lahaina for all the days and rented a car. Period.

If you ask me, this is what everyone should do when planning for Hawaii. Book a place for all the days and do what you feel like on the day. You can always do what you didn't do the next time, coz trust me, there will almost always be a next time.

But I should say, doing the research helped - helped figure out what was in store and what were the options. It's better to know your options atleast :) We listed those out in one final list that looked now like this:
Papaya
Pineapple - Dole plantation
Coconut water
Eat fresh from a farm
Kahului village
Molokini Snorkeling
Massages
Hotel day - swim in the resort pool
Tour of the stars
Luau
Cruise
Iao Valley sunset - maybe on thursday?
Star gazing on the beach
nutcharis thai cuisine
banana bread aunty anne's ?


These were things we wanted to do and we'd decide when to do what after we reach.
We also did book our snorkeling trips in advance on Friday and Saturday - one was a groupon that we came across and another was the Molokini Snorkeling that had to be booked, else given its a long weekend it could get filled up. Didn't really think much about when, just picked a day and booked it.

Now, our planning took a different turn, where we were checking out what to do at the hotel, and finding activities we were interested in. Realized there was a Luau the hotel offers for Saturday night. So we booked that as well in advance, just to be sure.

But that's about it. We didn't plan anything else - no crazy drives, no breezy hikes, no bueno.

And that was the best thing we did, we figured later on. We didn't really need to do the advance booking on the ones we did either, there are so many "special offers" or other promotions that you can avail onsite and that you can only do when you reach. So I'll give you the best tip for planning any Hawaiian vacay:
Tip#0: "do NOT plan, pen some options down and relax" :)  

This will make more sense once I complete my story.
Mahalo for reading!
Stay tuned for the rest,
Shamp