Aloha from Maui!!

Aloha! It's the only Hawaiian word I know!

Well, that's not true, technically. I also know "thank you" (mahalo) and "Merry Christmas" (mele kalikimaka).

Here we find ourselves in Lahaina, Maui for the Maui Marathon! Sumi and I, due to a very busy fall semester, are running the half this year. Oh yeah, and Sumi is here for CME (Continuing Medical Education), which means she's supposed to be hard at work studying, taking notes, etc.

Yeah, right.

We got in last night after about 16 hours of travel (10 of them on a plane) and collapsed in our very nice hotel/condo at Outriggers Ainu Nalu. This morning, we got up at 6:00 and headed out to drive the Road to Hana, which is an amazingly winding, narrow road that goes around the eastern edge of the island, through bamboo groves, rain forest-like areas and along the coastline. About 30 miles of the road is at 15 MPH or less, with many stretches where only one vehicle can fit at a time. It was the most harrowing, yet enjoyable drive I've ever taken.

Bright, sunny day

Volcanic rock archipelagos dot the coastline

Black sand beach

 Absolutely beautiful. The trip took almost seven hours out and back, with some rain on the return trip. I would highly recommend this drive to anyone that finds themselves in Maui. Leave at sunrise, return before sunset. I would never want to drive this road in the dark.

A typical view from the car. Rock face on one side, steep drop on the other, a road too narrow for two vehicles and a curve so sharp, you can't see more than 15 feet ahead of you

These little guys were all over the shore

Rush fans, you KNOW what was going through my head every time I saw one of these signs!

Many nice waterfalls along the road, too

After the long drive, we hit the local Safeway (only real supermarket in the area) to pick up some food for breakfasts and snacks. I knew things were going to be expensive in Hawaii, but I still had some serious sticker shock

Seriously? That's, like, $3.69 per scoop of raisins!

Everything was about twice as much as back home. We decided that eating out for lunch and dinner would actually be CHEAPER than making it ourselves. Heading back to the hotel, we decided to take a quick walk to downtown Lahaina (about 2 blocks away) and see the wharf and a really old tree Sumi had read about. On the way in, we saw a map listing some downtown attractions

An Exceptional Tree?

And then, a block later, we saw the tree

Those are not separate trees, that's all ONE tree!

It was absolutely huge. The tree took up about square block, with about seven or eight branches that formed full-sized trees of their own (including rooting into the ground) but all actually originating from the main tree. I've never seen anything like it. Or heard anything like it, either. It sounded like every bird in the city was there. We could barely talk.

That was it for the jetlagged duo today. Tomorrow, we leave bright and early (6:30AM meet-up) for an all-day snorkeling and whale-watching excursion. Sadly, there won't be any pictures of the day, since it will be largely in a glorified lifeboat in possibly choppy water. I will leave you with a sign from one of the national parks we visited on the Road to Hana, proving that the Japanese do not have a monopoly on amusing signage.

Ancient Burial Airport....