Maui

Have been in Maui for about a week now and I am still walking around in absolute awe of how beautiful it is here. The weather has been absolutely beautiful. The first few days it was a little warm and humid and there was a fair amount of VOG (Volcanic dust and gases) in the air. It almost obscured the islands of Lana'i and Moloka'i it was so bad, but then the wonderful trade winds kicked in again and cooled down the temperatures and humidity...and blew away the VOG! Maui is such a relaxing place to be in, the people are all so nice and friendly...you meet someone and and in just a few minutes you feel like you have been friends for a lifetime!

We do have friends over here that we have made over the years of visiting, and it has been good to see them again and catch up on what has happened over the past year since we had seen them.

One thing that has happened here is that tourism is way down. We were in Lahaina today and it almost seemed like a ghost town...very few tourists on the sidewalks, shops empty, only a few people in the restaurants, parking very easy to find. All of this is great for us as visitors to the Island, but I feel very sorry for the merchants here who depend on the tourist industry...I certainly hope they can stay solvent until tourism picks up again.

While in Lahaina today, we ate at Cheeseburger In Paradise. If you haven't been here, it is right on the beach and edge of the ocean. There was no problem getting a seat right by the window and looking out over the beautiful blue Pacific Ocean towards the Island of Lana'i. Now if you haven't been here before, you wouldn't know that although we had a window seat, there are no real windows with glass in them...just the openings where glass would normally be, and in Maui you sit there in front of the window opening and enjoy the ocean sounds and breezes blowing in while you eat your meal. Of course the occasional bird will fly in and walk around on the floor looking for crumbs to eat! Only happens in Hawaii, I can imagine the health department would have a coronary on the mainland! We could see small sand crabs darting along the narrow stretch of sand in search of bits of food to eat. Also there was an interesting dog on the beach, sitting there and looking at us. When he got up I could see that he only had 3 legs, but didn't seem to be hindered by the lack of one of his legs! We asked our server about him and she told us his name was Rocky, and belonged to someone who worked next door to the restraunt. She told us that he was waiting for someone to throw him a scrap of food, and she showed us how to make him bark, or speak, for the food!

More evidence of the lack of tourism is at our condo complex. I stood outside our front door and looked down at the parking area the other day and counted 90 parking spaces, but only 37 cars parked in them! Our condo is on the 9th floor and although there is another unit next to us that is occupied, we leave our front door propped open while we are there to let the wonderful fresh island breeze flow through our condo, and not once has anyone passed our door to go to one of the 6 units on the other side of us!

As we were walking around today I told Bonnie that when I go back to the mainland, I forget how absolutely marvelous and beautiful Maui is. When we come back for our vacations, I fall in love with it again and again! We love it so much that it is truly difficult to leave at the end of our vacation...but enough of talking about leaving, Bonnie and I are enjoying to the fullest capacity our days here on Maui.

Most of you know that it is our goal to move to Maui permanantly and just before we left for our vacation, we received some good news from a real estate friend of ours, that the market on the mainland is starting to move back up slowly, so that gives us hope that we might be able to make the move soon! How wonderful it will be when we can call this beautiful paradise our home!

Thanks for reading. Will make another post in a day or so.

Take care,

Ron, the Plant Man on Maui!