Waves ’n whales

Today was my last day in Lahaina.The weather was supposed to be good until afternoon. I decided that I will spend as much time in the area as possible, because I was going to spend the night back in Wailuku in the same hostel, that I had been on my first two nights.
As some girls from my hostel in Lahaina had told me about the beautiful beach in Ka’anapali, I decided to go there, until the weather would turn bad. My travel guide recommended Ka’anapali as one of the nicest beaches of all hawaiian islands, but it also said that it is a hassle to find parking there. So I decided to take the local bus. After breakfast I hopped on the bus, bought a daily pass and arrived at Ka’anapali a few minutes later. There is a huge mall at the bus stop. I think the bus stop is only there for the mall, not the beaches. I haven’t been in a shopping mood the whole holiday (except soap… I bought definitely more soap than coffee), so I ran straight through and there it was – a beautiful beach with golden sand and big blue waves. In Olowalu we had a very nice beach as well, but the sand was blackish and burnt my feet everytime I would move them. I found a nice spot in the sun and sat down. The waves were huge and some people were too afraid to go in.
And again as I was sitting there, a whale jumped at the horizont. I have seen a lot of whales before, but never saw them jump. People say, that when it comes to whales, Alaska is the kitchen and Maui is the bedroom. So maybe they are only trying to impress one another. Last time I saw a whale, I was in Tasiilaq, Greenland.We were supposed to go out with two little boats one evening, but people said, that there would be no whales in the fjord. We wanted to try anyway, so a couple of us went out with the village’s greatest inuit hunter – Tobias. Robert, the host told me a story about Tobias. One day he went out with his boat all alone, because again people said there would be no whales. He shot one, but it was too big to pull it with his little boat into the harbour, before they both would sink. So he pulled the whale onto an ice floe and pulled the floe with the whale on top of it into the harbour. I have no idea, how you’d move a dead whale onto an ice floe, but it is a nice story. When we went out with his boat, Tobias did not say a word. At some point he stopped the motor and there they were – three whales that would come up and dive down, showing their huge fins. One of them dived through beneath our boat and because of the clear arctic water I could see his eye and his baleen plates. Tobias knows his whales!

Breakfast

Maui bus

Ka’anapali beach

Hostel porch

Lahaina

Lahaina

Lahaina

Ka’anapali beach

Lahaina

I lay on my towel and moved as little as possible. After two hours it started to rain, and what started as a light drizzle, soon became a heavy downpour. So I got on the bus and went back to Lahaina to spend some more time there. I was hungry as well and ended up in a restaurant on the main street. That was a mistake. When I am travelling I always try to find little cafés or restaurants that offer local food. I’d rather eat nothing than bad food. This time that did not work out.
I arrived late in Wailuku. That night the alarm went of in front of my window and did not stop. It wasn’t until five minutes later that I wondered if this might acctually be a serious situation and not someone who tried the wrong PIN code to get in. It was not. Nevertheless I have to work on my reaction to alarm signals.