Day 10 - Maui Waui

 

 
Our day started early; Dave had an ARS call to make so I went up to the gym for TBP BB 3 and breakfast. They were out of both Greek yogurt and prunes, but I made do. I was successful at Where’s Walnut, which made up for it.

Dave was off the phone and getting ready to go when I got back. You get two tour descriptors when you book a HAL tour – one in the general shore excursion description, and one associated with your e-ticket. In today’s shore excursion we were pretty sure the one associated with the e-ticket was wrong, because it talked about closed toe shoes, a sweater or light jacket, and being inside a crater. After much thought and discussion bath internal and between ourselves (and our tablemoates) we both went with our waterproof hiking sandals. I also have a pair of baleaf water shorts with zipper pockets and my magnet-snap phone pouch, and that turned out to be the absolutely right things. So glad I didn’t wear my nearly-brand-new sneakers.

We met in the World Stage and once our group of 22 was called they split us into two groups of 11 and we piled into Grayson’s van. He was a very engaging tour guide. It took about half an hour (also known as little more than 15 minutes in Grayson speak) to get to our destination, a 40 acre farm on the rainy side of the island. It was raining pretty good when we got there.

They provided a backpack, lunch, water, and one of those thin plastic ponchos that  make you sweat so much that you’re wetter than you would be without it; I tried mine and decided it was a no. We headed off into the in the rain, and pretty soon we were in a bamboo tunnel. Along the way Grayson found and shared out some fruits – star fruit, ice cream beans, passion fruit. It was only about 5 minutes (to Grayson, everything is about 5 minutes, unless it’s a little more than 15 – 25 or about 1) to our first stream crossing, which was problem for the folks who’d been confused by the e-ticket description and wore socks and sneakers. There was no way but to go through it, so they did.

This was not a paved path tour – we were on narrow, muddy paths with rocks and tree routes. Grayson delighted in the challenging paths – through a giant hibiscus grove, up the side of a little stream canyon – and amazingly only one person fell. Our first stop was at a waterfall with a pool under it. It was on public land so there were quite a few people there. We did have a long bad moment there where Dave lost his glasses underwater, but fortunately math lecturer Frank found them. From there we scrambled up a steep hillside using ropes that were put there specifically for our tour groups – I still can’t believe the group did it. Our next stop was another pool with a shorter waterfall and the possibility to jump from a “cliff”, which I did, much to my surprise. Dave was still eating so he didn’t do it. We had apple bananas with our lunches and they were like bananas with a hit of acidity – delicious. On the ground were many small fruits, which were called pineapple guavas. I don’t know why the fruits are all named for each other.

 

From there we hiked out to a beautiful overlook where many people made jokes about jumping off, and then we brought our muddy selves back to the ship. We were joking about not needing the spa mud foot treatment as we walked back through the stream and tried to get the mud off our feet and legs. My description of the excursion really doesn’t do it justice – the melalucca and guava trees, the banyan roots and the volcanic landscape were soul-expanding. It was raining for about half the time and it just didn’t matter. A sad thing that happened is that I lost my white sunshirt, probably by putting it into the wrong van.

We drove a little more than 15 -25 minutes to get back to the ship, muddy and contented. The clouds were coming and going, making amazing monochrome shadows on the valley between the two mountains. Between the thick mineral sunscreen and the mud it took a long time in the shower to get clean. Dave went first, and I did some ukelele and hula out on the verandah while I waited for my turn. I didn’t look at it until later, but wen we got back to our cabin there was an ad from the spa about some services that they’re having specials on, including the Moor Mud   Foot treatment. I don’t think any of our mud brothers will be taking advantage of it.

After we got cleaned up, Dave headed up for his afternoon beer in the Ocean bar and I worked on the blog for a bit. Once I was done I took a look at the daily program and saw that they were doing doodling in the art studio (did you know it’s a thing?). There were 3 of use there – two of us had never done it and one person had done it before. In my quest to not worry about being good at doing things I figured I’d give it a try. The person who works there wasn’t as helpful as she could have been, but I kept asking questions until I was pretty comfortable with the assignment. I ended up with a big drawing of a daisy-like flower, and started filling in the petals. After the first two I was thinking this is going to take forever, I’ll just do it until the session is over and then slip away, but then the session was over and I was still going. It was fun and very relaxing and even though mine is messy and most of the petals didn’t turn out how I envisioned them, it’s still kind of cool and I like it.

 

Check out the mud!

I went back to the room and realized I hadn’t finished my wordle or any of the NYT games, so I did that and we made another bag of laundry and then it was time to head to the Pinnacle Grill for the Morimoto popup. We’d invited our tablemate Ilene to go with us, and we had a very nice dinner. We’d been to the actual Morimoto restaurant on the Nieuw Amsterdam with Josh and Jen on our last cruise and both the food and company had been exceptional. The company was excellent this time as well, but the food was merely very good. We had a good time anyway. But because dinner started at 6 instead of 5 we missed the early show on the World Stage, so we went to the late show.

A cool thing about this trip is that while we’re cruising the Islands HAL has been bringing local entertainers aboard, so we had another show of music and stories about Hawaii. This time was a woman, Barrie Kealoha, so there was more hula (always good) and another performance of the song “How Far I’ll Go” from Disney’s Moana. She told us tha she an Erwin are the only two Hawaiians doing these cultural shows on ships. We were lucky to get both of them as their perspectives and shows were complementary.

By the end of the show we were both ready for bed!