Hawaii 2012 - Day 6

We had finally gotten to Maui (yeah!!) and this was the island that I knew we could really slow down and just chill.  yes - we did have so much fun on the Big Island but obviously it's called the big island (real island name is Hawaii) because it's the largest of all the islands and takes a lot of time to drive around.  And Maui is where you go when you want to relax on the beach and have a couple of lava flows or mai tais......yummy!  I purposedly did not book ANYTHING for Maui and got the best condo on a private beach that was perfect for our stay.  I would not mind making Kahana Sunset "our Maui place" going forward.  We were in an oceanfront condo, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, all the amenities of home, private beach, all beach toys included, heated pool and keiki pool (for the kids), etc...  

 

 

 

So anyway, on day 6 we decided to just hang around our condo and chill.  We had SOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun every day waking up, eating breakfast and heading down to the beach and then pool each morning.  The afternoons were spent doing different activities around the island (or simply just doing more swimming) and i'll post about those for each day. 

I wish that I had a polarized lens for my camera because right outside of the condo was a turtle cleaning station.  These turtles (Honu in Hawaiian) were HUGE!  Literally the biggest honu i have ever seen....I would guesstimate they were between 4-5 feet in diameter and there were between 15-20 of them.  Matt didn't believe me until he saw it and then we drew a crowd of about 10 guests looking and taking pictures of this.  It was really very cool.

 

Later that day, we headed over to Whaler's Village at the Kaanapali resort area.  We had stayed here the last time we were in Maui and it's such a fun, laid back area with outdoor shopping, restaurants and lots of hotels and condos.  There is plenty of people watching and action going on..... our girls really enjoyed the music at the Hula Grill. 

 

Hawaii 2012 - Day 5

On Day 5 of our Hawaii trip, we left Volcano National Park and headed back toward Kona where we would then hop over on Hawaiian Airlines to Maui for the rest of our trip.  *Note: we rented minivans during our trip and for the longest time Matt was trying to convinence me that I needed to get one when we got back home.  It was nice at times but I am not ready to be a mini-van mom now, and probably not ever.  Just for the record. :-)  

 

  

One of the things that Matt and I missed out on during our 5th anniversary trip was getting to see a black sand beach.  This was the one stop we had to make driving back and it was very much worth it.  We had the beach practically to ourselves and it was so cool.  The texture of the sand was very different, almost like the pebble beaches in Greece because it's made out of crushed up lava rock.  For some reason, the sea turtles (aka Honu) love to hang out here and we got to see a few swimming in the ocean that morning. 

This summarized our experiences of the beach - I was the only one actually smiling at the camera, Natalie was busy looking down or opposite the camera and Rachel was just crying because she was usually afraid of the ocean and sand.

I love this picture of Natalie - she was having so much fun walking on the sand and throwing it around.  i took about 20 picture of her just having a blast.

Have I said how WONDERFUL it was to have Aunt Lisa on our trip?  She is the bestest friend ever!

Our flight to Maui was short and sweet and we got to see both Maui, Lanai and Molokai.  We picked up our minivan which at this point in our trip, we had gotten very effecient loading and unloading into the minivan. We loaded up 2 car seats, 3 carryons, 2 large bags, 1 diaper bag and 5 people within 5 minutes tops.  I have to say we were pretty proud of ourselves because the car attendant's mouth just dropped and all he could say was "wow!".    Once we got ourselves loaded up, we headed down past Kaanapali towards Kahana Sunset condos.  I had searched and searched and then searched some more for a place to stay on the beach and this was a winner!   

Day 4 - Volcano National Park pictures

i forgot to add these super cool photos of the volcano and the red glow from the lava that we got to see. it was pretty cool experience and i'm glad I got to see it in my lifetime. one more thing on the bucket list regarding lava would be to actually see lava flowing in person. for now, the glow was amazing.