More Hawaii

I forgot to say that this first part of our trip we are on the island of Maui. He stayed in a condo in the town of Kihei. It is on the west coast of Maui and is a cute little place. One of the big attractions off of Maui is the Molokini Crater. Lot of of different companies do snorkeling trips out there. We had never been snorkeling before so I guess it was a good place to start but it was really crowded. Even with all of the crowds we got to see quite a few fish and such. The reef there was really pretty too. Something about the crater makes the water there really clear. I can't remember why, but they told us on the boat.

This is the crater. As you can see there are other boats there. I think there were 3 or 4 when we were there.

Jane had a good time on the boat. I had intended to get her in the water but it ended up being kind of cold. We also learned something on this trip and that is that swim diapers do not absorb anything. I thought they were meant to keep stuff out of the water but I guess not. Lesson learned.

My mom actually took a little time to snorkle too. She really loves to do it and it has been a long time since she has been able to.

This is the second spot where they took us. They called it 'Turtle Town'. Don't be fooled by the name because we only saw one turtle and it was right before we got out of the water. So lame.

Me and mom with our gear on. Too bad you can't see us closer because those masks are really flattering.

The next day we went to see the Haleakala crater. We decided on a tour (on the recommendation of Jeff's brother) where we get to go to the top of the crater and then bike down. We don't bike down from the very top but from about half way down. It was pretty up there and the guy who drove the bus told us a lot of interesting information about the crater and Hawaii in general.

It is interesting because you end up being above the cloud line. The cloud go from about 5000 to 8000 or so thousand feet. The top is about 10,000 feet.

You can actually hike down into and across the crater. There are cabins that you can stay in down there.

This is the other side of the mountain looking down to the ocean.

The plant is called the silver sword plant. It is pretty big deal up there as it almost went extinct. They talked about it a lot.

This is a little bit lower than where we actually started. It was a pretty view all of the way down.

The trees here are eucalyptus trees. I could smell them while we were there but Jeff said he couldn't. I guess they are same kind of trees that Vicks uses to get it vaporub stuff. Also if you look at this pic you can see I am wearing flip flops. It was all I brought and I didn't even think about it until I woke up that morning. It worked out okay, though.
It took us about 1 and a half hours to get back to the bike store. I guess we were the first ones there. We did stop a few times and even ate at one stop. It was a cool ride down. The only thing that was annoying was the bikes were fixed gear bikes and so you could only pedal at certain times. I probably could have gone down a little faster if it had gears. Thanks to my mom for watching Jane while we did this.
The next day we went to a town called Lahaina just to walk around and check it out. We were flying to Oahu later in the afternoon.

This is the back of building in old Lahaina. It is a nice are right along the water with a bunch of shops and restaurants and such.

We found this little park are and ate under this banyan tree.
First thing that morning we walked across the street to the rock at the beach. We were told that sometimes you can see turtles coming to feed on the seaweed on the rocks. We didn't see any though.

And yes I do look really tired because it is first thing in the morning and Jane didn't have the best night. That is the jist of our time on Maui. We caught a 5 pm flight to Honolulu this day. We spent the next couple of days there. That is for next time.