Sunset from our condo

Yep. Been home for a couple days from Maui and now I'm getting around to blogging about it and sharing some pics.

I gotta tell you. Five hours on a plane is crazy. I was so exhausted and hungry. Doesn't help that the complimentary meal was a dry turkey sandwich. Oh well. Just landing in Hawaii you can feel the humidity; something I really didn't miss leaving the Midwest.

For the week, we rented a condo at Wailea on the island of Maui. Which by the way, I totally recommend Wailea for anyone to vacation to when going to Hawaii. Lots of beaches and other places around the island of Maui. It's really beautiful. Plus the condo we got was awesome. Great view of the sunset for us photographer junkies and it had a kitchen for nights when we didn't want to leave and go some place fancy to eat. Speaking of, that night we went to a restaurant called The MonkeyPod for dinner our first night. I was half dead until I realized I ordered a burger with a lot of mushrooms on it but it was total bliss.

For a surfer who died

Next day was our first exploring around the area for beaches and other areas. We first went to a beach near some hotels, and then a more remote beach with a lot of rocks and crazy waves that wasn't really suit for swimming that much. But it was good for exploring and taking photographs. We actually saw wild goats which were cute and on the right is one of the two crosses we found. You see them a lot driving by beaches so I guess it's a warning to know where it's safe to surf and when. The last beach we went to had extremely large waves so we just did some sun bathing and shell collecting. Unfortunately I got my shoulders burned in the process and it stung so much. Luckily aloe vera works wonders so now it's gone.

By a body of water..

After that, we decided the next day to go on a trip to a little place called "the road to Hana". For anyone not knowing what I'm talking about, I'm talking about a road swerving through the mountains of Maui to a small town called Hana on the other side of the island. It's like driving through Costa Rica except slightly safer: lots of mountains, lots of swerving and turns, and being practically in the middle of nowhere for hours. We got to the black sand beach, yet just as we began relaxing, it started to rain. Talk about bad luck, huh?! As we hurried back to the car, Marina noticed her big toe hurting a lot and swelling. It wasn't until we got to a park a small drive away from the beach that we found out that it was from a honeybee sting... How that works? Well, bees in Maui are huge and black. And when I say huge, I mean stupidly huge. No joke. So as it turns out, my sister is now allergic to bees.
After turning back to get Benadryll, we decided to call it a day and drive back to Wailea before it got dark... That is of course after some brief stops by some beaches for more photos. Hence the picture of the sign with the foul language. Haha!

And let's see... More going to beach, going around the mall nearby, looking through art galleries, got a pretty Hawaiian dress...

And once again we decided to go through the mountains to see a big crater created by volcanoes, but sadly we weren't informed that high up in the mountains meant extremely cold weather and it didn't help that we were in shorts and T's. So we took pictures from an observatory and got the heck outta there. It wasn't a total loss though because we came across a garden on the drive back and decided to take a peek, and it was totally worth it. To the right, of course, is one of the tikis from that garden. There were so many flowers that I probably have a hundred photos of. There was even a cage of doves and lovebirds and a pond of koi fish. I'd put all of those pics in this post but I have so many. Perhaps I'll do a different post and share some of those pics. Oh and for dinner we went to a place called Cheeseburger: Island Style in Wailea which serves awesome burgers. Oh, and below is something I came across the menu that I just had to take a picture of. And yes, I'm talking about the Cheeseburger Challenge.

Anyone care for a 30 dollar heart attack? :D

And the day before we went back to San Jose, we drove out to a placed called Lahaina for more exploring, shopping and viewing art galleries. We went to a place called Maui Swiss Cafe for a small bite to eat and me and my sister shared a crepe filled with Nutella and bananas, and it was pure bliss. It was really cute because the owner of the restaurant had a dog named Mahina who knew she's not allowed in so she was just literally millimeters away from the tile floor. Lahaina is another tourist destination filled with shops and people. It's even home to the third largest tree in the world which we heard from a local that parts of it had to be chopped down or else all of Lahaina would've been just a giant tree. It truly is amazing.

And of course, the next day we went home to California and the best part is it was raining and we saw a rainbow before we had to leave.

Overall, it was an amazing trip and I really want to go back to Hawaii again sometime in the future. Aloha.