As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, one of the things I most wanted to do in Maui was to go on a whale-watching excursion, and, on Wednesday, the time had finally arrived!
At 9:15, the girls dropped Hugh, the Man-Cub, and me off at the Lahaina marina; neither of them were at all interested in the whales, but chose, instead, to spend the morning further exploring Lahaina. Their loss!
The menfolk and I took in the sights around the harbor until we were issued our boat passes and instructed to embark on the Maui Princess for two hours spent watching one of God's most majestic creatures (can you tell I was excited?).
The ship left dock at 9:45, and, by a little after 10:00, we got our first up-close glimpse of the humpbacks (we had been seeing them breaching the water in the distance as we made our way out to sea, which had only increased our anticipation).
The Cub and I quickly learned what to watch for in order to know where to focus our cameras (water geyser), and we managed to get quite a few good pictures...
... but, we were starting to regret not booking a trip on one of the much smaller boats, which appeared to put visitors much, much closer to the whales.
That regret vanished when this happened...
...Right. In. Front. Of. Me.
At which point, I was perfectly happy with my choice of a bigger, much sturdier boat.
I would have dearly loved to see one of the whales jump completely out of the water, but, according to the captain, our particular whales were males who were competing for the attention of a female, so, that day, they were just knocking each other around, as males do.
So, no whales jumping for us. No worries, it was still an amazing experience and, besides; if we had done and seen everything, there would be no reason to go back. Am I right? I'm right.
I was still happy to scratch the item off my list.
By the time we turned back toward Lahaina, I was starving (again, Sea Bands for the win! No motion sickness, at all!), so we met up with the girls at a cute coffee shop, where they were enjoying iced lattes and the free WiFi (those Instagram stories weren't going to update themselves!).
The girls were also starving, as it turns out, so we walked through downtown Lahaina, to Cheeseburger in Paradise, for lunch. There was a twenty minute wait (the only time we waited for a seat in a restaurant the entire time we were on the island!), which we spent playing on the beach and checking out the nearby shops.
Once we were seated, we quickly ordered and then played Spot the Colorado License Plate on the walls of the restaurant until lunch was served.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the condo, and, later that evening, the kids were invited to participate in the nightly blowing of the conch shells, which I talked about in an earlier post.
While the kids were tuning up for their conch-blowing, Hugh was BBQing some delicious chicken legs on the community grills, and, once the the kids had wished the sun a speedy return, we adjourned to the lanai for dinner and wine (I had a little bit of wine on this trip, can you tell? Don't judge me! I was on vacation!).
Then, we turned in, anticipating an early wake-up call the following morning.
Why in the world would we get up early while on vacation, you ask?
Tomorrow: The road to Hana!
(That's why!)
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