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The flight to Maui is only half an hour (even though it cost us both a fortune!). We got picked up at the airport by our hostel and driven back there. The last hostel was not very good, the staff were awful so were hoping that this one is going to be better. The first impressions are quite good, the staff seem freindly enough and our room only has 4 beds so it shouldn't be too loud.
After we have checked in and had a look round we head out to check out the town we are in. The place is a lot more like we imagined Hawaii to be, there is two massive mountains right behind us that are full on green and the town itself seems quite old, like from the 50's but it is really nice. We spent the afternoon walking round the town having a look around the shops an just finding out where everything was and planned what we were going to do while we were here. The hostel is a lot better than our last one and there is actually a bit of atmosphere at nights! There are some cool people here so we spent the night in the common room speaking to everyone.
Next day we headed out on the bus to a bay called Ma'alaea Harbour. The weather today isn't the best so that put an end to our plans of swimming at the beach. Ma'alaea is quite a small little village where all the tour boats leave from. There isn't loads to do down there apart from the beach and tours so we just had a look round some of the village shops and bay and then got back on the bus. We stayed on the bus until we got to a place called Queen Ka'ahumanu Center which is the main bus terminal and a big shopping mall. We spent a while in here looking round some of the shops and I spent ages looking for a laptop, I found one I was thinking about buying but decided against it for now. After we had finished looking round here we got on another bus and headed down to Walmart to do our weekly shop as everything is overpriced where we are staying (it's $8 for a small jar of jam!). That night we spent our time in the common room again speaking to a few of the people in our hostel.
On the Friday we jumped back on the bus and headed to the West side of the island to a popular bay called Lahaina. This was what we expected Ma'alaea to be like as it had a nice beach, small local stalls selling things made in Maui and small bars scattered around. The town is really nice and has some great views on the ride down there. We spent a while walking round checking out the town and then stopped somewhere for lunch. On our table was a card advertising a local pet store with wild exotic birds so we headed over that way to check it out. They had about 8 exotic wild birds that were not caged and were free to fly around the shop. They were all multi coloured and one of them wolf whistled at you everytime you walked past. I held a white Macau which took an instant dislike to me and bit me everytime my hand went near his head! I then held this massive black bird that had massive hair that stood up whenever he was excited. Not too sure what type of bird he was but they are from Costa Rica and there is only 100 left in the US as they are now endangered. He was 25 years old and apparently had never bit anyone but as soon as he was sat on me he went for me! This bird wasn't for sale but to buy one would set you back $60,000! Round the corner they had a pen with two 3 month old pot belly pigs! They were well cute and we got to feed them and I got to sit in there pen while they climbed all over me, well getting one when we have a house! On the way back we stopped off at the shopping mall as i decided to get that laptop. When I was about to buy it they told me that the deal it had conveniently ran out that morning and it would have cost me a lot more money, I quickly told them where to shove it. We spent that night talking with everyone in the hostel again.
Next morning we had to be down the dock at half 6 as we had a snorkeling trip that left at 7. Me and Jodie set our alarms and got the bus down to the bay but when we reached the bus we realised that there was no one on it or waiting for it. Us being the t*** we are woke up an hour earlier than we were meant to and were down the harbour at half 5 in the morning instead of half 6!
When we did finally get on the boat we headed to a place called Molokini Island which is a volcanic crater that was made when the bow dormant volcano erupted thousands of years ago. In the crater there is a huge coral reef that is full of colourful tropical fish and my friends from Waikiki, Sea Urchins! We spent about an hour here snorkelling and checking out the coral. We then got back on the beach and headed to another bay called Turtle bay. The visiablitiy here wasn't as good as Molokini Bay and there wasn't asany fish but this was the place where the Turtles came to let the fish eat off them. For a while we never saw any but on the way back to the boat I looked over to my left and saw a massive sea turtle swimming next to about 3 feet away. The thing was huge and he came up right by us for a breath and then eased back down to where our boats anchor was and used it as a back scratcher. It was really good to see. When we got back to the bay we were going to spend the rest of the day doing something else buy as we were up so early we were too tired and just headed back to the hostel to relax.
The weather while we have been in Maui has been awful, it has been raining and windy everyday apart from our first day here. We were quite shocked but we found out in the hostel that Maui is the 3rd wettest place in the world due to the rain forrests and we have two massive mountains right behind the hostel that is a big rain Forrest. Today though is not actually a bad day, there are still a few grey clouds around but mostly it's sunny so we are going to head up to Iao Valley as it's probably going to be the nicest day to do it. It is a 3 mile walk up to the entrance of the valley which is between the two mountains. The scenery as you get into the entrance is incredible, you are right between two mountains and all you can hear is the river as you walk up. Both of the mountains are covered in massive trees and is totally green. When we got to Iao valley we took the path which led you around the national park and seen some great views of the Sea and where we had just come from. We then took a walk up to the Iao needle which is a huge rock that sticks up between the two mountains that rises up to 2500 feet. This was where the bloodiest war in the history of Hawaii took place when one of the Kings fought to unite all the islands. The needle is quite impressive and again we got some great views from the top but we didn't stay too long up there, instead we headed down and looked for a dirt path to try and find a waterfall so I could go swimming. We walked along a few dirt paths (being bad asses as there was a sign saying not to go off the concrete path!) but we couldn't find a big waterfall that I saw pics of. In the end we settled for a deep part of the river. The rocks were so slippery and spiky that I wore my flip flops, big mistake! I was walking out through the stream when the strong current took my flip flop straight off my foot. Before I even had time to react my flip flop was a good 10 metres down river and not showing any sign of slowing, all I could think about was over a 3 mile walk back with only 1 shoe! Jodie raced down the side of the river to see if she could get it before it was totally lost and lucky enough about 5 mins down stream a family seen it float past and quickly grabbed it, was a tad embarrassed when I went to thank them! After our little scare I didn't fancy going back into the river so we headed back to the hostel, on the way out I noticed the waterfall I had been looking for, it was right at the entrance and somehow we had walked past without seeing it!
On our last day we didn't really fancy doing too much after our 10 mile hike yesterday so we headed down to the closest bay to our hostel, Kahului. There wasn't really too much down there, it was more of a docking place for cruise liners so we just had a look around the 2 malls they had there. I was hoping to find a laptop shop but the malls were shocking and really didn't have anything in them. We carried on walking and saw that there was a national park not far away that looked like it was a big pond (on the map anyway!). When we got there though it was pretty much nothing and just looked like a swamp, didn't look like any wildlife or anything was there. On the way back we stopped in a sports bar and watched a bit of American Football and had a couple of drinks before getting back to the hostel to get packed for Honolulu.
Maui has been really good and the scenery is much more what you would expect from Hawaii but the bus service has only been going for a few years and only covers a quarter of the island. We are going to come back on holiday at some point and rent out a car to see the Eastern side of the island and do things like the swinging bridges which we were unable to get to this time. We are heading back to Waikiki tomorrow to meet Sue and Paul for Ollie and Sophies wedding so that should be good.
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