We're officially on Maui time today. We only barely managed to get up for the sunrise, which was clear and beautiful, and then rested in bed for a while. Despite this early promise of a clear day, it poured rain on and off for the rest of the morning, so we headed out as soon as we could.
Our first destination today was the Kahului Swap Meet. (Their fresh-from-1993 website should actually give you a good feel for it.) I love going to markets when I'm traveling, since they're one of the best ways to really get the pulse of a place. Unfortunately, this plan was nearly derailed by the fact that the Swap Meet had moved since our guidebook had been published, and there was nothing there when we got to the designated address. Luckily, Yelp was on hand to save the day, and we were soon headed in the right direction. As soon as I saw people wandering around with gigantic bags of popcorn, I knew we were in the right place.
We strolled through the stands for an hour or so, checking out the wares: nice jewelry, crap jewelry, Hawaiian shirts made in China, floral print dresses, art, woodcarvings, local produce, massages, spiritual healing (Did you know that lava rocks will align your quantum energy fields? It's totally true!), a little food. We picked up some handmade chopsticks and chopstick rests, but managed to resist the rest of the wares. But we did get one of the aforementioned gigantic bags of popcorn, and it was awesome: a little salty, a little sweet, a little charred, and super-crispy. Exactly the right sort of thing to accompany us to our next stop...
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Malu'aka Beach. At least, I think it was Malu'aka. There are so many beaches along the southwest coast that it's hard to tell which one actually corresponds to the tiny undesignated parking lot at which one is currently located. But heck, what does it matter what the place was called --- it was perfect. There was a little strip of shade under the trees at the back, a gorgeous spread of sand, sparkling blue water, and pod of playful humpback whales slapping their fins just offshore. We got a good view of the half-submerged snorkeling mecca of Molokini Crater, too:
We laid out for a bit, then took a dip (along with the car keys. Oops. The transponder seems to have survived all right, so no one mention it to the rental agency, 'kay?). I saw a dark shape in the water that I thought might be a sea turtle, but turned out to be just a rock. Drat.
After swimming a bit, we pulled up stakes and headed north up the road, seeking a little variety. Big Beach was too crowded to park at, so we ended up instead at the gorgeous and aptly-named Polo Beach, backed up against the tony resorts and fringed by beautiful people and equally beautiful scenery.
We swam a bit, but since it was very hot out by this point, we headed back to the Retreat before too long for showers and a bite of dinner. Rather than cooking in, we drove into Pa'ia for a bit of pre-dinner shopping and pizza at Flatbread Pizza. The shopping was much more of a success for Michael than for me; he picked up a lovely new Hawaiian shirt, the real deal, at a shop called Moonbow. But most of the women's shops were selling modern-style stuff and overpriced crap, and not the sort of more native apparel I was looking for. So I went empty-handed.
Dinner, luckily, was a roaring success all around. We got a large pizza, half mac-nut pesto with olives and half roasted-tomato marinara with Maui onions and goat cheese. Oh yeah. It poured rain on and off through dinner, drumming on the tin roof at the outdoor seating area, but it had the good sense to let up just as we came out and popped next door for dessert at the Ono Gelato Company.
The weather remained unsettled all the way back to the Retreat, with dark storm clouds scudding overhead and a bright full moon peeking out between them. I'm a bit worried about the weather, since we're planning to get up early tomorrow to drive up to the top of the dormant volcano to see the sunrise, but it should blow over by then. And if not, we're going anyway. I didn't come this far not to try it. So I'll need to sleep fast --- the alarm is set for 3:45.
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