Day 2 - This day blows!!

We woke up today nice and early thanks to a rooster who apparently thinks 3:30 in the morning is 8:00 AM and resides right behind our van. After some nice Hawaiian grown coffee and a little breakfast, we headed north along the west coast looking for the locally proclaimed best snorkeling spot in Maui, Napili Beach. This was an interesting beach because it was only about 20 yards of sand with a very steep incline from where you put your towel and chair down to the waterline. This Made for interesting people watching as the unsuspecting tourist would be walking along, aka, Annemarie, when a wave would come unexpectedly and start pulling them back into the ocean. We quickly grabbed our mask and headed to the waterline where the real entertainment began as Annemarie desperately tried to balance on 1 foot while putting a booty on the other and getting pummeled wave after wave. I almost fell in the water from hysterical laughter as she started rolling around the beach, finally able to put her fin on after being washed halfway out to sea. We snorkeled around and quickly learned that we are more spoiled than we thought with our underwater landscapes near home. There were some pretty fish, but hardly any coral or other marine life. After swimming quite a ways, we decided to have one more look around some rocks and to our pleasant surprise, a small sea turtle swimming right by us. That became the highlight of this beach. Not wanting to spend all our time on only one site we jumped back in the van and headed further north to see a blow hole we found on the map. The drive was beautiful windy roads up shear cliffs with magnificent views. Arriving at a small parking area on the side of the road, we started our hike past the danger sign down towards the rocky coast and through an area called acid war trail name such because of the way the rocks have been weathered to look like acid was poured over them. We made our way down near the blow hole, which shot a huge fountain of water into the air as incoming waves pushed under the rock out of the hole. I took some video really with the only intention of going viral for catching tourist dumb enough to try to look down the blow hole and getting sucked out to sea. Fortunately for them that didn’t happen and but we did get some beautiful photos and headed back towards the van making a quick pitstop to purchase some world famous biscuit cookies and dried mango from Mama Lai’s Homemade Goodness roadside stand. Just talking about them makes me want to eat one now. Heading south along the cliffside road we made several stops to hike down to hidden beaches we found along the way. At one point, we spotted a large catamaran in a cove that appeared to be taking snorkelers and figured this must be a great spot so we pulled over and walked through an old growth forest to a very rocky beach between the cliffs. This land is privately owned by native Hawaiians, but allows tourist access to the beach to enjoy its beauty. To get to the prime snorkeling spot we had to swim out quite a ways but the swim was well worth the effort. We swam through huge beautiful coral heads up to 15 feet high teaming with tropical fish. I would say this has to be the most beautiful snorkeling spot. Now getting later in the day we loaded up, heading back south towards our camp and passing through Lahaina, where we witnessed the devastation of the recent fires. Our hearts really go out to those impacted as you could see how horrible this must have been. Back at camp Annemarie whipped up some chicken and mashed potatoes and we had a relaxing evening under the stars.Læs mere