Last night, we spent a little time getting to know our room, which is called the Bamboo Temple. It's a stand-alone structure on the grounds of the Retreat, encompassing a large bedroom and sitting area with a small kitchen and eating area off to one side.
It's actually quite an interesting feat of engineering: The whole thing is built entirely out of bamboo, and the owners claim that it's the only freestanding bamboo structure in the entire US. It's constructed roughly in a spiral pattern, like a nautilus, and there's an eight-sided skylight at the very top, over the bed:
It's decorated with all sorts of unusual Southeast Asian art, which does help the atmosphere but which was occasionally a bit odd:
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| Ganesh watches over the coffee maker |
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| Freaky horse statue |
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| Err...is this depicting what I think it is? Probably. |
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| Quarter-to-sailboat already? Is this what they mean by "Maui time"? |
The whole Maui Retreat, as you may have gathered, takes its eco-friendly status seriously. I mean, really seriously. All of the food scraps need to be taken to the worm box for composting. We were admonished not to flush our used toilet paper (!), because that can be composted too. They provided a small bin on the side of the toilet for temporary storage purposes. Well, we did want to get away from it all...
But it's plenty cozy and the bed was comfortable, and last night we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the palms creaking and the geckos chirping in the ceiling above. (Yes, geckos chirp. Don't worry, I didn't know that either.)
I'd left the front curtains open last night since our room faces east and I was hoping to see the sun rise. No such luck, though; it was cloudy. In fact, several storms blew in off the ocean as we were making breakfast, soaking the lawn in a torrential downpour, then leaving almost as soon as they'd arrived. Despite the rain lashing the windows, breakfast was very pleasant and quite delicious: freshly squeezed orange juice, a mango, and toast with goat cheese from Maui's own Surfing Goat Dairy.
After breakfast, we braved the shower. I say "braved" because the shower is located outside. It's almost threateningly rustic.
This turned out to be more of an adventure than I thought. Not because of the temperature, since it was perfectly warm and there was plenty of hot water, but because of the wind. It's a bit odd to have the shower stream constantly shifting on you while you're trying to rinse off, and doubly odd to have to take into account whether it's windy or not before deciding whether to get into the shower in the first place. But it was quite refreshing and there's something kinda nice about being able to look up and see the sky while getting clean.
Then we took a quick stroll around the grounds. We started off by trying to find the trail down to the waterfall that was prominently advertised, both on the website and in the materials in our room. This was easier said than done. The map that we'd been given did not seem to stand in any particular representational relationship to the real Retreat. Let me show you:
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| The text on the bottom says, "literaly [sic] feel your feet." Right. |
See the bit in the lower left-hand corner labeled "Entrance"? That's where we came in last night. And it looks like continuing down that road will lead directly to the trail to the upper waterfalls, labeled "G." No such luck. There's nothing down that road. The trail actually starts from inside the compound grounds, somewhere to the back of the main house.
Also, as I'm sure you'll notice, there are various numbered structures on the list that don't appear on the map, various letters used on the map that have no corresponding label, and several letters and numbers that are used twice. Sigh. Like the "interns" that checked us in last night, I'm sure it was trying its best to be helpful, but it was, in actual fact, failing miserably.
We did eventually stumble onto the trailhead for the upper waterfall trail, but it turned out to be much steeper and more difficult than we anticipated, plus it was quite muddy from the rain. There were ropes on either side of the trail, which helped a bit, and we managed to get all the way to the pools that caught the upper waterfall before it cascaded over the larger, lower waterfall.
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| Upper waterfalls and pool |
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| View over the lower waterfall |
The pools did look quite inviting, but we decided to save our swim for a day that wasn't quite so windy and unsettled. Plus, we'd booked massages for that morning and definitely did not want to miss them.
After the massages and some lunch, we hopped into the car to do some exploring down on the west coast. We made our first stop just a few miles down the road at a roadside fruit a flower stand, where we bought a drinking coconut. The woman at the stand went at it with her machete, opening up the top so that we could suck out the coconut water:
We also bought a few pieces of pineapple and some fresh bananas for snacking. Then we drove across the narrow part of the island and around to the west coast.
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We started off by going all the way up to Kapalua, where we have dinner reservations for tomorrow, just to see how long it would take. (Answer: two hours. Yes, it's a small island, but the roads are windy and people drive really slowly. Plus, the most direct route between our lodging and the restaurant is marked as impassible with all sorts of red letters and stern warnings on our car rental agreement. Hrm.) Then we headed back down the west coast to see what there was to see.
By this point, it was blazing hot and sunny, and the jeans and sweaters we'd put on up at the Retreat to ward off the chill were getting very oppressive. We stopped at a beach along the side of the road to dip our toes in, our first tactile encounter with the Pacific Ocean. We also stopped briefly at Lahaina to stroll around, but again this was a bit less pleasant than it should have been because we really weren't dressed for the weather. We'll be back.
On our way back to the Retreat, we picked up a few more groceries and a mixed six-pack of the local brewing company's beer. Michael had the coconut porter --- not half bad. I had a double helping of herbal tea to soothe my poor sore throat (remember, I'm on vacation, that means I'm sick!). Then dinner, then some sleepy discussion about what to do tomorrow. We probably stick close to the Retreat since we'll need to leave around 4:00 to make our 6:00 dinner reservation on the other side of the island.
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