Linda's post

January 23/11

Roy and I are sitting by the pool. We will have a glass of wine and some banana bread we bought on the road to Hana yesterday.

It has been a busy few days. Friday I took a quilting lesson and learned about traditional Hawaiian quilting. I am doing a taro plant pattern. The class was fun and it I turned out to be class star. Now that has never happened before. It helped that I picked the easiest pattern. It was recommended that I sign up for two classes on Friday but it turned out that I only needed the morning class. We went for a swim and did some body surfing in the afternoon.

Saturday we drove to Hana. What an experience! I will let Roy tell about that. We were exhausted at the end ( a 10 hour day and most of it spent driving on narrow, sometimes one lane bridges with 600 twisty turns). The views were wonderful, the vegetation amazing! We stopped for waterfalls (a bit of a disappointment), views (most were tremendous but one we hiked up a mountain path over exposed roots that were set to trip you, with slippery wet clay between the roots only to find the view has been obscured by vegetation and then we got to go back down over what we had come up. I had my walking stick, in the car, so Roy found me a stick to use. MY HERO. Got some fabulous banana bread and some mango bread but the baked breadfruit was sold out much to our disappointment. It was quite a trip.
Today,I reluctantly went boogie boarding and hated to get out of the water when I got tired. It was a blast, even though I got most of the sand inside my bathing suit.

Notes from Roy
We were told that we had to get to the airport at least 2 hours before for inter island flights. We had tried to get a shuttle to get us there at that time, but the best we were able to do is 3 hours early, which didn't make us happy but thought we could have lunch before we left. We get to the terminal and check in, and the lady at the counter asked if we would like an earlier flight, as there was room on the flight which left 50 minutes earlier than our booked flight. So we took it. Turns out that the inter island terminal has less food available than the Bellingham terminal, which doesn't have much. Got to fly in a Canadair 200 commuter jet, seemed old but held up fine for the 35 minute fligh. They offered to sell beverages on the flight, but by the time you would have your beverage, they would be collecting the plastic glasses before landing.
Linda didn't say anything about our car. We had booked a compact because it is cheaper and also easier to get around in. The girl at the counter said we would look good in a convertible, we said no, but she said she would look it up and see what she could do to upgrade us. All were spoke for, so she tried to get us to take a jeep. When she offered us one for $400 which is half the cost we said no. So she told us to go out to the lot and pick a compact car, keys were in it. Out we went looking for compact cars. Turns out there were 2 left, and one was just backing out of its stall. As we walked over to the last one, a young man got in and drove it away. The lot attendant told us to pick any car in the full size lot because she was out of compacts. We have a Buick Lucerene with leather interior, and all the bells and whistles. Still not sure what they all are.

Our first day after swimming at the beach across the road we toured the beaches down south. They are beautiful and didn't seem to crowded. We may go to one tomorrow before heading to Lahanai for the afternoon and our evening Lulau.
As for the drive to Hana, the shoreline and overlooks were wonderful. The water falls were disappointing. None of the falls we saw were very high, nor was there a lot of water flowing over them. The cascade falls outside of Mission are much more spectacular. The road was something else. There are over 600 curves and 54 bridges of which almost 50 are single lane over the 28 miles. As well there are a lot of single lane stretches where the signs say to yield oncoming traffic. Speed limit for a lot of the road is 15 miles per hour, with a maximum top speed of 35 mph for a short spell, but mostly 15 or 20. Once we got to Hana, around 3 PM, we decided that it would be better to head back so we weren't on the road after dark. It took over an hour and a half to get over the 28 miles of curves. We had to stop after we finished the road, we didn't feel so good, and we saw one vehicle had stopped to let the passenger out to barf. We stopped at an overlook (lookout) where the best surfing waves on the island are located. Lots of surfers out there and great waves, at least by our standards, we could have watched them all day. We got home about 5:30 and both of us were bagged. We both laid down and had a nap,and were finished for the night. Having a full size car didn't help, but even a compact would have been a challenge.

One other note, we were in Foodland buying some groceries and who do we see, but everyones favourite politican from Mission. Yes Randy Hawes is in Maui, can't seem to get away from the Liberals.