To celebrate the New Year, Catie and I continued revenge travelling. After landing back in San Francisco from Rome, Italy on January 1, we turned back around two weeks later to fly to Maui. This was a trip we intended to take in April of 2020 that was postponed over two years by the wrath of Covid on travel.
As I’m typing this, we’re two days in and I’ve already seen enough to want to make this a regular January occurence. A tip that I don’t feel troubled sharing because the readership of this site is precisely zero: Hawai’i, or Ka’anapali, Maui at least is nowhere near capacity with tourists in early January. The weather is an easy 72ºF, the whales are abundant, and the ocean water warm enough to walk right in wearing only trunks.
Our first day was an easy day, lounging around the Westin Maui Resort and Spa and seeing the various pools they had to offer. At 28 years old and not contemplating children anytime soon, the multiple adult-only pools offer an escape that usally can’t be found in most vacations I’ve been on. I powered up the 2018 Kindle Oasis for some poolside reading. I had intended to find a book on Hawaiian culture because the tourism sites make it clear that a wise tourist should learn something about the culture so as not to embarass themselves. Alas, the hotel wifi was incompatibile with my wifi-only kindle, so I’m stuck with Crime and Punishment — not quite the same, at all. The resort area met expectations. Filled with tropical birds (who seem to live a somewhat depressing existence, but at least do get removed from their cages daily for some playtime), fish, and impromptu luaus, it can easily fill an entire day.
Keeping in line with my prediction in 2023 of an increase in the availability of non-alcholic but still fancy drinks available to non-drinking millenials, the resort bar served up a refreshing Lava Flow mocktail that I will probably get again tomorrow.
We did explore in the mid-afternoon, finding a steep run through an old golf course, meeting some locals along the way. Most of the locals so far have been people who moved to Hawai’i 10+ years ago, and have no doubt assimilated, but aren’t true Hawaiian natives.
Dinner is a tricky thing — the price of food near the resorts can go head-to-head with Disneyland’s grub during Christmas. So by the time the evening rolls around, our wallets didn’t feel like heading into the ring for another bout. We decided to spend $50 on two poke bowls at a Chipotle style walk-in.
At this point, I would love to go into day 2 which was truly enchanting in the way that makes you think that it would be totally feasible to quit your day job, move to Hawai’i, pay 0.27% property tax and work remote while snorkelling and fishing in the evenings. But, Catie and I have some snorkelling to do, so day 2 must wait until tomorrow. Catie is a scuba school drop-out. But she dropped out of the SCUBA School of hard-knocks, a.k.a. 52º Monterey Bay in the “summer” time. So I have high hopes for us in the tropical waters just a few steps away.