After an early start yesterday for our drive around the island, this day we slept late, and spent some time lounging on the patio of our suite, enjoying the tropical atmosphere.
Eventually, we got up and out, and drove into Lahaina, tha main town on the west shore, about ten minutes from the resort, for breakfast - okay, by the time we got there, it was lunch - at Cheeseburger In Paradise. This restaurant has no connection with Jimmy Buffet or his chain of restaurants of the same name. In fact, the owners of the Lahaina restaurant got into legal trouble with Mr. Buffet over the name. They ended up reaching a settlement which allowed them to keep the name for the Lahaina restaurant, and one on Waikiki, but they're not allowed to open any more restaurants using the name.
Anyway, the food was good. Here's a picture of a typical Cheeseburger From Paradise:
Terry also ordered a mai tai, which came in a glass with a face:
...which she enjoyed:
Here are a couple of pictures of the restaurant itself:
On the way to the restaurant, as we drove into town, we noticed that some of the streets were blocked off, because there was some kind of parade going on. When we got closer, we discovered it was a protest march. It took me a little while to figure out exactly what they were protesting. Actually, it seemed to be kind of a mixed bag. Some of the marchers were carring banners advocating a free Hawaii - there is a sizable contingent of native Hawaiians who want Hawaii to break away from the U.S. and become an independent nation. But the main thrust of the parade seemed to be pro-agriculture and anti-GMO. Here are some pictures:
After we ate, Terry sat and nursed a cup of coffee, while I strolled along Front street, Lahaina's main drag. Like any tourist town, the street was lined with gift shops, art galleries, gift shops, restaurants, and more gift shops. I stopped into one gift shop and bought the most brightly colored Aloha shirt I could find - you'll see a picture later.
One restaurant I passed was Fleetwood's On Front Street. This is a restaurant owned by, and named for, Mick Fleetwood, drummer and co-founder of Fleetwood Mac. The resturant's logo is the picture of Mick Fleetwood from the front cover of the Rumours album. I stopped in and asked if Mr. Fleetwood actually had any part in the operation of the restaurant, or if he just licensed the use of his name. I was told that yes, he really is an active participant.
I went back and got Terry, and we walked to the center of town. In the courthouse square is a large banyan tree (w) . One of the unique features of banyan trees is that as their branches grow outward from the main trunk, they send down shoots which take root when they reach the ground, becoming secondary trunks. The banyan tree in the Lahaina courthouse square fills the entire square, and has sixteen trunks - and it's all one tree!
The main trunk
We then went for a ride on the Reef Dancer:
...a semi-submersible boat, for an underwater tour. As the boat headed out, I stayed on deck for a while, and took some pictures of Lahaina:
That last picture shows our resort, viewed from across the water. I also took a picture of some of the many other boats out on the water:
...and one of an intrepid adventurer out for a parasail:
And then I went back down to the underwater viewing area. There's an old joke: "Wow, look at all that water!" "Yeah, and that's only the top!" Corny, perhaps, but it's actually true. You look out at the vast expanse of the ocean, and you have to stop and remind yourself that what you're looking at truly is only the surface, and underneath that surface is an entire other world, only occasionally visible to us air breathers.
Here are some pictures of the coral reef:
The blue tint comes from taking pictures through the boat window. In real life, there's still the blue tint - it's underwater, after all - but the colors aren't as washed out as they appear in the pictures.
Of course, we saw lots of fish, of all kinds. There was a narrator on board, who described what we were seeing, and there were two scuba divers who swam around the boat, picking up various types of underwater life and holding them up to the windows for us to see:
Black triggerfish
Octopus
Sea stars
Sea urchin
Unicorn shell
The tour narrator, it turned out, was from Argentina (you can see her in the picture of the boat, above, wearing a yellow shirt), so Terry naturally started talking to her in Spanish, and they had a nice conversation.
After the tour, we drove to Maui Ocean Center, an aquarium and aquatic museum. We didn't go to the aquarium - that would have been rather redundant, after our boat ride - but we went there to go to the gift shop. The last time we went to Kauai, we bought a bottle of passion fruit juice, from Aunty Liliko'i, a store specializing in all things passion fruit (liliko'i is the Hawaiian name for passion fruit). We used the juice to make Liliko'i Chiffon Pie, which was to die for.
So while we were in Hawaii, Terry wanted to get another bottle of passion fruit juice, because real passion fruit juice is impossible to find on the mainland. Well, it turns out that it's not all that easy to find even in Hawaii. A little Internet searching revealed that the Maui Ocean Center gift shop carried it, so that's why we went there. And while we were there, we bought some other Hawaiian gift items for the folks back home, and some for ourselves.
We then went for dinner at Seahouse, a very high end seafood restaurant. Too much money and too many calories, but well worth it.