I woke up at 5:30, which was quite late for me.[1] I checked my email and responded to a few items in my inbox. I mulled over the previous two days. It seemed incredible to me that we had actually seen less than on our first trip to Maui, and in 1997 we had only allotted one day to the Hana excursion. The rainy weather was one factor, but it could not explain everything.

The hotel (PI on the map) was a short walk from Front Street, the main drag of Lahaina.

I then tried to assess the information that Sue and I had gathered about Maui in order to schedule the rest of our time there. Spontaneity has its value, but my experience has always been that research and planning really paid off. So, I reread sections of the guidebook and thumbed through the mini-magazines that are used to promote various restaurants and tourist spots.

We would not be able to accomplish much on this day. By the time that we finished with breakfast there would not be much time to drive anywhere, do something interesting, and still return in time for the sunset cruise. I looked up the dinner cruise section of the guide book. None that departed from Ka'anapali beaches were listed, and none charged anything close to $100 per person.

Front Street was the center of the action in Lahaina.

I still was interested in visiting Kalaupapa, the famous former leper colony on Moloka'i. I found a website on the internet that provided an email address for the woman who ran Damien Tours. As far as I could determine, contacting her was the only way to visit Kalaupapa. She still called herself a patient, and I got the impression that she was rather old, even by my standards. The guidebook only provided a telephone number. Since I have always hated doing any kind of business by phone, I sent her an email asking if it was possible to schedule a tour for Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

The main business of the Maui Princess was dinner cruise. This group was probably looking for whales.

The only other activity that I really wanted to do was to drive around the West Maui Mountains and see the sights that were highlighted in the guidebook. I figured that Sue would not enjoy this adventure, but she might want to come anyway.

We also needed to figure out where we were going to eat our meals. I was not enamored of any of the places described in the guidebook, and the descriptions in the pamphlets were never reliable. Most were written by or at least edited by the restaurant operators themselves.

The setting for breakfast was ideal ...

When Sue finally woke up she showed me a certificate that Donna had given her. It was worth $50 off of a dinner for two at Gerard's, the restaurant associated with the hotel. The guidebook had insisted that Gerard's, while offering delicious food, was terribly overpriced and did not incorporate local foods into its menu. The $50 would go a long way to mitigating the former, and the latter argument certainly carried more weight with someone trying to promote the island and its cuisines than with tourists like us. We decided to go there, but we had not yet determined the date.

... and the menu was more diverse than expected.

My contribution to this discussion was that I really had a hankering for a meal at a Mexican restaurant that did not insist that tacos be stuffed with fish. The guidebook highly recommended a place called Frida's that was right on Front Street in Lahaina. Perhaps we could go there.

I loved the faucet in our bathroom. I had never seen anything like it.

Eventually Sue was ready for breakfast. We went down to the pool area and quickly found an empty table. The menu was rather impressive for a free hotel breakfast: Coffee, juice, fruit, and a choice of French Toast, Granola, Eggs Florentine, Croque-Monsieur (toasted ham and cheese sandwich), Bagel and Smoked Salmon, and scrambled eggs with bacon. I had the scrambled eggs; Sue tried the Eggs Florentine. The food was good, and the atmosphere was unbeatable. Moreover, we only had to descend a flight of stairs to obtain it.

I decided to walk into town after brushing my teeth. I needed to find an ATM in order to have enough cash to reimburse Sonja for our tickets for the cruise. I found such a machine outside of a store on Front Street that sold tickets to all kinds of activities. I made the withdrawal without any difficulty. I then went down to the harbor, which looked much like it did in 1997. On the other hand, there seemed to be more small companies offering marine excursions of various types. Some — the glass-bottom boat and the submarine — were familiar, but there seemed to be more whale-watch[2] tours and fishing excursions. There certainly were more people there.

The Banyan Tree was already magnificent 21 years ago. The "tree" on the left was actually a support root for the main tree. Everything in this park was part of the same tree.

I walked over to the magnificent Banyan Tree, which provided shade for the entire park surrounding it. I wished that I had a photo from 1997 so that I could judge how much bigger it had become in the ensuing years. At this point it would probably be impossible to take a photo of the whole tree from anywhere on land. It might be possible from an aircraft. In a few places the branches were so huge that they had put in wooden supports that a casual observer might mistake for the root supports that it extended naturally in many other areas.

Frida's was a lot farther than the numbers led me to expect. I started at the Banyan Tree (T on the map).

I sat on a bench under the awesome tree. I wrote in my spiral notebook as much as I could remember about the two days spent on and around the road to Hana.

I looked up Frida's in the guidebook. The address was 1287 Front Street. Fleetwood's was just up the street a little ways, and its address was 744. So, it must be about five or six blocks.[3] I decided to walk up there to check it out and to determine whether Sue would be willing to walk that far.

No shade on the seawall.

The sun was hot, and the shade was scarce. I walked past the seawall and then crossed to the east side of the street. After I passed the Seaman's Hospital, Front Street became a residential area with apartments on the east side, and houses on the west. There was no shade, and I began to worry a little about getting a sunburn. I had not used any screen.

I had been walking for more than twenty minutes, and the numbers had reached the 1100's. I figured that Frida's was right around the corner. At that point I came upon the bridge over the Kahoma Stream. Frida's was certainly on the other side, but based on my experience up to this point, there was no guarantee how much farther it was. There was no prospect of any shade whatever.

The residences began and the shade ended after the Seamen's Hospital.

It has always pained me to admit defeat and turn around, but I decided that this trip was a fool's errand. I made an about-face and walked back toward the hotel. I walked past an interesting looking pizza place called Pi Artisan Pizzeria. Nearby was the theater in which Warren & Annabelle usually performed. I confirmed that it was indeed closed. I also learned that the magical part of the show was sometimes headed by someone other than Warren.

This was not Ringo's favorite vessel. It was the glass-bottom boat. The guy on the left was paddle-boarding. The island in the background is Lana'i.

At this point an old song was running through my head: “Don't listen to him, Dan. He's a devil, not a man...”

I departed Front Street in favor of the outlet mall, where I discovered some benches in the shade and an ABC Store. Hallelujah! I purchased two ice-cold Diet Cokes for the same price as in Waikiki. I gulped one down as I read some more restaurant reviews in the guidebook. Two young ladies with a McDonald's bag seated themselves at a nearby table. I figured that there must be a McDonald's within walking distance, but I did not yet know where. None was mentioned in the guidebook.

When I had downed the beverage, I crossed the street to the Foodland grocery store, which was, according to the guidebook a good place to pick up sandwiches. I probably could have purchased those Diet Cokes more cheaply there, too. I made a mental note of its location and kept walking to the Plantation Inn.

In the room Sue told me that she had directions to the launching spot for the sunset dinner cruise. We were supposed to meet Sonja and Chris at Leilani's restaurant at the end of Whalers Village by the beach just before 3:00. Sue also said that everyone had to take off their shoes before boarding the boat. I put on my last clean dress shirt. I also brought my sports jacket in case it got cool on the water. I never wear sandals, and so I wore the pair of tabis[4] that I had purchased at Longs Drugs twenty-one years earlier. I had never had a chance to wear them before.

Sonja was waiting for us at Leilani's, the home of the $23 fish taco.

We arrived at the parking structure without any difficulty, but we did not know which way to go after we walked from the cars back to Ka'anapali Road. The best bet would have been to walk through the parking structure, but we did not think of that. Sue's GPS advised us to turn right on Ka'anapali Road, which would take us back toward Highway 30. That seemed wrong to me, but we eventually arrived at the shopping center. The restaurant was at the far end. We located Sonja and walked to the beach where we met Chris.

We boarded from shallow water using the staircase.

The boat's representative made everyone remove their shoes and put them in a big box. We also had to form two lines so that two people could board at a time. When they asked if anyone needed assistance, Sue went to the front of one of the lines.

They backed the big catamaran almost onto the beach and dropped some stairs down over the aft end. We then climbed aboard two-by-two. I expected them to allow us to retrieve our shoes once we were aboard, but they kept them hidden away. Everyone was barefooted for the rest of the cruise.

The captain explained the law of the sea, which was basically don't jump the line to get to the bar.

The captain addressed us. He began with a terse safety briefing. Then he asked if there were any youth aboard. When that was answered in the negative, I think that he skipped the part of his speech in which he asked for a modicum of decorum. He explained that there would be an open bar, recorded music, and, a little later, food. Then they opened the bar, which had one line for beer and one for the hard stuff.

The opening of the bar was greeted with an enthusiastic cheer.

For the first part of the trip we headed north towards the tip of the island. The skipper used the engines to get us to that point as fast as possible. Sonja had worn a patch to protect against motion sickness, but she did not enjoy this part of the trip at all.

The ship then turned around and went south under sail. When the voyage began, we could see Lana'i quite clearly. By the time that we made the turn we were closer to Moloka'i.

The beer choices were Land Shark and Michelob Ultra. I chose the former.

The best part of the evening was the conversation. I learned a bit of Chris's background. He and Sonja had spent many years abroad as he did engineering work that mostly involved the setup of large plants. They had lived for some time in India, which was where Sonja took up bridge. They also lived in Spain, which was where their son Steve, one of my first bridge partners, was born.

Chris and Sonja only had one more day in Maui. They told us that they planned to take a guided excursion up-country to ride around a cattle ranch in an all-terrain vehicle. I had read the description of the ATV tours in the guidebook. Suffice it to say that they were not high on my list of things to do on Maui.

The coolest thing that we saw was this rainbow. I think that this was the boat that got mooned.

The worst part of the cruise was the company. Liquor was flowing very freely. I almost felt like I was at a fraternity party, or maybe a wannabe fraternity party. At one point a catamaran from the same company passed us. Some of the guys on our boat mooned them. I had a couple of beers, but this group did not put me in a partying mood.

This was my best shot of the sunset over Lana'i.

Early in the evening one of the men proposed to his companion. He got down on one knee and everything. She accepted his proposal. Chris took a photo of the big moment with his cell phone and sent it to the guy. All that was fine, but I did not expect the newly betrotheds to spend the rest of the evening sucking face. Their table was right next to the stairs. Everyone passed them every time they came down for a refill.

The food was served buffet style on the bar. They provided appetizers of chips, salsa, and veggies with dip. The supper was chicken, fish, rice, and ratatouille. Everything tasted pretty good, but I was surprised that we basically got a cafeteria-style meal on a $100 cruise. There were not enough tables for everyone, but I suspected that a fairly large number of people drank their supper. I did not see anyone standing around trying to eat, and there was a lot of food left uneaten.

The view back toward the West Maui Mountains was actually more impressive.

Sonja and Sue near the end of the cruise.

The sunset was a pretty big disappointment. Sunsets off the coast of southern Maui are beautiful, but where the boat was the sun went down over Lana'i. There were some interesting colors at one point where the sun peaked beneath the clouds that enveloped the island's central peak. The reflections off of the clouds obscuring the peaks of the West Maui Mountains were actually more striking. I got a couple of good photos, but I expected better.

The disembarking went without a hitch. We retrieved our shoes, said goodbye to Chris and Sonja, ransomed our car,[5] and drove back to our hotel. Sue had a more enjoyable time than I did. She almost always has a good time in the company of lots of people.