On the 15th July, Leela, her mum and I flew to San Francisco for a day trip.
Well, we were there for three days, but sadly due to jet lag, flight times and figuring out how to get to the hotel from the BART station, it ended up as one day with two short bits at either end. But we made the most of our time there, and the first thing we did on our full day was head over to Alcatraz. I managed to get sunburnt on the boat going over, and spill orange juice all over my trousers, but the rest of the trip was good - I had been before when I was 15, and it was just how I remembered it. We had an audio guide around the prison, I only got lost once, and a seagull gave Leela a present from above, all over her jumper. Bless.
We took the boat back, and as we were up at that end we wandered around the piers for a bit and had lunch at the Boudin bakery, before going into the main part of the city. We found the famous gate into Chinatown, had a Starbucks, did some shopping (Leela for a new jumper, me for new trousers), and hunted around for a restaurant. We must have been in the wrong part of town for restaurants though, because in over an hour we only found two. Weird.
The next day it was up early and a taxi to the airport. Shame we didn't have a bit more time there to do more, but then it was only ever going to be a short-but-sweet stop-over on our journey to Hawaii.
We arrived in Maui on Wednesday after a 6 hour flight, hired a car, drove to the hotel in Ka'anapali and had some tea. Now in a time zone 11 hours from the UK, we decided to have an early night. We were staying in "villas" (glorified hotel rooms) a short stroll from the beach, and Leela and I blatantly had the best one - it was owned by people who had furnished it really well (including plasma TV, DVD and hifi), and they rented it out through the hotel. The villas all had kitchens, so we had the option to do self-catering, which as it turned out was good - for a resort town, there are surprisingly few restaurants on the west side of Maui. Or at least ones with vegetarian options for Leela and her mum.
When we woke up the next day we headed off to the nearest supermarket at the Lahaina Cannery Mall for some food. It was wonderfully hot and sunny, with just a few clouds floating across the sky. We stocked up with some food essentials and in the car park I stated incredulously that I thought it was starting to rain. They laughed. We headed to the beach for the afternoon - and the beaches in Maui are awesome.
Halfway through the afternoon, I declared that it was definitely trying to rain, and after a while they agreed that it was indeed spitting. The spitting got a bit stronger, and we woke up the next day to find that it was raining - not just a drizzle, but proper day-turned-to-night black clouds, wind-lashed palm trees, the full works. We were not impressed - if you want rain, you don't have to spend 16 hours on planes to get there. Indeed, as we'd find out later that week, there was more than enough rain back home. Although it did occasionally break into sunshine for half an hour or so, the gusting and squalls of rain continued on and off for rest of the day and the best part of the next - turned out we had decided to go to Hawaii at the same time as Hurricane Cosme.
Determined not to let the patchy hurricane goodness get in the way of our holiday, we drove over to the main town in the area, Lahaina. At one point it was the capital of Hawaii, and it also grew to cope with the requirements of whalers in the 19th century, but it's still a pretty small town by modern standards, mostly centred around one street that runs along the front of the town next to the beach, which is imaginatively named Front Street. It's also apparently home to the second largest banyan tree in the US.
Once the hurricane had passed, the next few days were spent lazing around the pool, lying on the beach, and visiting the nearby Whalers Village. There was a free trolley service between the local hotels and the Whalers Village, which was actually just an outdoors shopping centre nestled between two large hotels. It was home to three main places of interest to me: the Maui Grill, who served very tasty sandwiches and burgers; a Honolulu Cookie Company store, who make amazing shortbread cookies covered in chocolate; and a Haagen Dazs ice cream shop. It makes me very sad that there aren't any similar ice cream shops around here - I am quite convinced that there is no better source of nutrional goodness than a rockie road dazzler. I want to move to Maui.
On the Monday we went on a tour of the east cost of Maui, along the winding road to Hana, a tiny village in the middle of the rainforest. Although we had a car and an the owners of our villa had left an audio CD tour of the road, we decided to get a tour minibus so we could all enjoy it. A good job too, because the road was, quite frankly, terrifying. Hairpin bends, sheer drops, and more congestion than the A30 - at one point there was a traffic jam 10 cars in each direction trying to cross a 1-lane-wide bridge (and people had to start reversing), and later on the road was so narrow that an oncoming vehicle accidentally slipped half a tyre off the road and over the cliff edge trying to get past our bus. Even the tour guide driving the bus gasped at that one. It's a bit of a nightmare road, but it's the only one that the inhabitants of Hana have. When I move to Maui, I think I'll live on the west coast. In a recent earthquake, the entire highway along the south end of the island was blocked and broken, so rather than do a round trip we had to turn around and come back - and this time, we were on the cliff-side edge. It would have been terrifying if I hadn't felt so ill from the foul sandwich I had eaten at lunch - what is up with American bread? But the fear and nausea aside, this road trip was awesome.
I should probably also give a special mention to Round Table Pizza, the most incompetent restaurant in the world. Our only options for dinner were to either eat at the small hotel cafe (which was ok, but wasn't all that), drive down the road to Lahaina for a meal out there (which was a bit of a mission), or get a take-away from Round Table Pizza at the Fairway Shops next to our hotel. I think we went there three times, and although the food was good, they were most memorable for getting the order wrong each time, forgetting to give us the food when it was eventually ready, and the last time not only getting it all wrong, but then not being able to figure out how to get the tills to give me back the $3.50 they overcharged me. Hmm, well it was about that time that I noticed this cashier was about 8 stories tall and was a crustacean from the Paleozoic era... no, wait, never mind. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
On Wednesday we took a helicopter around the island. It was my first time on a helicopter, and it was an amazing experience, even though the banking was a bit alarming - the helicopter would hang in the air, feel like it was hovering on its side, and you'd look down and seeing nothing for hundreds of feet to the rainforest floor below. We flew up to the top of the dormant volcano and back down around the rainforest surrounding Hana that we had driven through two days before, only this time getting much better views.
In that last photo, we were all hunched over because we didn't want to be decapitated by the blades. I told the others that they weren't to worry - I'd act as an early warning system...
Our last full day of the holiday was Friday, and we went on a boat out to Molokini, a partially submerged volcano crater 10 miles off the coast of Maui. Half of the crater is above the water, and forms a protective environment from the harsh Pacific waves, making it perfect clear water for snorkelling to see the coral and fishes 10 feet below the water. We then moved on to Wailea beach and snorkelled again, this time to see green sea turtles. I caught a glimpse of one off in the distance, came up to clear my snorkelling mask, put my head back under the water and saw it swimming right underneath me. Awesome, but we gave the camera a day off, so no photos.
That afternoon, we went on to the ocean centre at Ma'alaea - although I've been to several ocean centres before this one focussed on the pacific ocean and the specific types of life that had made Hawaii their home. Because the Hawaii is so isolated, there are a lot of species that are unique to the islands, so it was well worth visiting.
Having seen all of the beautiful fish, we then went to Lahaina where I had a lovely dinner of mahi-mahi - dolphinfish, and very tasty. Mmm. We ate at the Lahaina Grill, voted the best Maui restaurant 14 years in a row. Although almost every restarant we saw claimed to be Maui's best restaurant, this was certainly the best food I had on the whole trip - although sadly they served fancy portion sizes rather than the standard american sizes to which I had become accustomed, so we found a Cold Stone Creamery. Now there's a company that seriously need to open a branch in Cheltenham. If you ever see a Cold Stone Creamery in your travels in the US, go in and buy a Chocolate Devotion. No, scratch that, if you are ever in the US, passing near, or are just bored one weekend and know where your passport is, hunt down your closest Cold Stone Creamery. It is that good. I was distraught that we only found it on the last day of the trip, but apparently they've got 1350 stores dotted around the country, so I'm sure I'll see one again. Damn, I love America, land of the free, home of the most awesome ice cream parlours.
And then before we knew it, it was Saturday, the day of our departure. We had to check out at midday, but our flight wasn't until 7pm, so Leela and I went off to the Whalers Village again for some lunch (and were served by Tristan's doppelganger) - good job we did, because we didn't get another decent meal until Monday. We knew our travel "day" was going to be bad before hand, but looking at the numbers on paper didn't really prepare us for what ended up being a 52 hour travel day. And I thought waiting for the train was bad. We were up at 8am in Hawaii, left on the 6 hour flight at 9.15pm HST to San Francisco, arrived there at 5am PST, then waited until 1pm PST for our 9 hour flight to London where we arrived just after 7am BST Monday morning, followed by a 2 hour car drive back to Cheltenham, getting there at 9pm HST on Sunday back in Hawaii, ready to start a new day at 10am BST.
At which point, we found we had no running water, and Leela threw a huge tantrum. But that, boys and girls, is another story.