Day 6 of Honeymoon

Sorry this took me so long, but I'm going to try to finish up the story of the Honeymoon!

So on Friday, Seth and I woke up and had a fairly leisurely morning. We went to the cafe on the resort for breakfast and walked on the beach for a bit.

Then around 11:15 or so, we headed over to the zipline place to sign our lives away and meet up with the other people in the group to be bused over to the mountain. We were going to be ziplining back and forth over a valley, which was pretty cool, and we would also be fed lunch. Yum!

Here we are in our gear:

Even though I'm afraid of heights, this was actually a lot of fun, though it was harder than I thought it would be. You have to fling yourself off one ramp and then run up the next one in order to land. I was pretty bad at the landing and tended to slide up the ramp on my butt.

Me ziplining

Seth ziplining

We were up there for about four hours and had lunch, which was pretty nice. There were eight lines that got longer and longer until the last one was about 1000 feet and you ended up going around 30 mph between the two points. It was awesome!

After that, Seth and I headed back to our resort to relax and watch the sunset.

One Month

We've been married one month!

It's kind of funny because on one hand, it seems like hardly any time has passed since we've gotten married, so it's almost hard to believe it's been a month already. Plus I haven't completed my name-change business, which I had assumed wouldn't take me that long to do, haha. On the other hand, it feels like our wedding was so long ago...

Some people ask "How's married life?" and it's always hard to answer this question. Sometimes I go "Great! It's going great!" but sometimes I got "Eh, it's the same." To be honest, it is the same. Seth and I had been living together for over three years and we already owned a house together. Nothing has really changed except that I have a little more bling on my finger and now Seth wears a ring. Sometimes it's hard to remember to call him my "husband" because I'm so used to the "boyfriend" title which he had for five years before we got engaged. But there's also been this sense of relief... I had wanted to marry Seth for so long and marriage was something that was really important to me. I wanted to have that before starting a family. I wanted the sense of security that I felt I would receive when I got married. And I have received it, although I think that security really took place before the wedding. I don't ever have that knot in my stomach that's followed by "what ifs". I feel so secure in our relationship now and I'm finally stress-free of having to plan things! Although lately I've been planning parties, haha. And my Maid of Honor is getting married in June, so I'll be busy for the next few months!

We probably won't really celebrate tonight, though I'm thinking I'll make one of Seth's favorite meals and force him to use one of our wedding napkins since we have so many left. We'll see.

Day 5 of Honeymoon

Day 5 was the fabled Road to Hana! Descriptions of this road just don't do it justice, but I'll try to describe it to the best of my ability. Seth and I woke up fairly early since it was going to take us an hour just to get to the beginning part of the road. The road starts a little after Paia and, like all roads in the middle of nowhere, that's where the mile markers start over and aren't always exactly a mile a part from each other.

The road is one of those roads that's both narrow and windy. It hugs the coastline (up a cliff) and is surrounded by rock and trees. Basically, it was the scariest road I've ever driven on. Every bridge was a "one lane bridge" where you had to yield to on-coming traffic. Also, half the drive was so narrow, that you'd have to stop and try to pull over if you met on-coming traffic. But the views! The views were gorgeous and there were a lot of water falls and scenic spots.

Beginning of the Hana drive (where the roads are still good)

Random stop for pictures

Look how lush it is here!

Ke'anae Arboretum

Ching's Pond

Upper Waikani Falls (a.k.a Three Bears)

Us in front of the Three Bears

More Waterfalls

This was taken on a road off of the Hana Highway

After probably 3 hours (or more) on the road and a few pit stops to swim, take pictures, explore, and buy some banana bread, we finally made it to Hana! You could tell you were in Hana because the road suddenly stopped veering every which-way and became straight for maybe three miles. Plus it turned back into two lanes, which was a welcome relief. In Hana, we stopped at the Wai'anapanapa State Park to check out their Black Sand Beach.

View of Wai'anapanapa State Park

Us!

Lava tube on the Black Sand Beach

Other end of Lava Tube

Black Sand (volcanic rock) - it actually looked a lot darker in person

Once we had thoroughly worn out our visit in Hana, we decided to move on. We wanted to at least hit the Seven Sacred Pools past Hana before having to turn back. That was about 10 miles away, and luckily the roads past Hana didn't seem quite as terrible as the roads leading into Hana.

Seven Sacred Pools

Lower portion of the pools

Upper portion of the pools

I took a quick swim at the Seven Sacred Pools, and then we packed up our stuff to head back home. We wanted to leave before it started to get dark because I thought the drive on the Hana Highway would probably be even worse in the dark and I was worried about driving it at night. Unfortunately, even though we were now on the southern half of the east portion of Maui, we had to go back the way we came instead of continuing. On the most southern portion, there's an expanse of road that's supposedly one lane for five miles and unpaved and rental cars weren't supposed to drive it. That meant that instead of going maybe 20 miles back to the central part of Maui, we had to turn around and go back the way we came, roughly 50 miles back around. Driving back didn't seem quite as bad as driving to Hana, maybe because I was impatient to get home, maybe because I was a little more reckless. In either case, it only ended up taking two hours from Hana to get back to Paia (two hours to drive roughly 40 miles, not bad!).

Day 4 of Honeymoon

Day 4 (Wednesday) was the day of our Luau. We were going to the Old Lahaina Luau and it didn't start until 5:00 or so, so we had plenty of time to kill. I wanted to go snorkeling and Seth wanted to go scuba diving, so we spent about an hour arguing (some honeymoon, right?) about what to do. Finally we agreed to go scuba diving, but not today. I wanted to make sure that whatever we did, we'd be done with it in plenty of time to shower and get dressed to go to the Luau. So Seth called up a couple places and booked us a scuba date for the following Saturday with Pacific Dive. Then our morning and afternoon was still free and since Seth didn't want to go snorkeling, we decided to do a few of the hikes from the Maui Revealed book.

I made a list of four potential hikes and then plotted them out so that we'd do them in order of driving. Then we headed out to the more northern part of West Maui for our first hike of the day: the Two-Tiered Tide-Pools. We headed north with some water and snacks and our trusty guide book, and we soon pulled over where the book indicated. We followed the trail and started the hike. It was basically an old dirt road that lead out from the main road towards the ocean. Then the road curved left and, as the book indicated, we looked to the ocean to see our destination:

There it was - the two-tiered tide-pools. Since it wasn't high tide, the top tier wasn't currently flowing into the second tier, but it still looked pretty awesome. There was only one catch: there was no actual path leading from the trail to the tide-pools. We had to scramble down some rock and do a little mountain climbing (okay, it wasn't mountain climbing bad, but it was still pretty hard) to get there. But it was well worth it!

Waves crashing against the tide-pool wall

Once down to the tide-pools, we took some pictures, and went swimming! The tide-pools were plenty deep and extremely warm since they'd just been sitting in the sun all day. They were also filled with interesting fish and surrounded by snails. It was pretty cool.

Once we were cooled off, we decided to head back to the car to go on our next hike: a blowhole. We continued north until we saw the described parking lot and pulled over. This hike was described as an old fire-trail, so we figured it would be easier than the scrambling over rocks we had just done. Boy were we wrong! The trail ended at this beautiful view:

The next portion of the "hike" was through a desolate waste-land. No joke. We climbed down into this valley of dust and rock where we proceeded to drink the last of our water and wonder if we were even going in the correct direction.

Fortunately, we were able to find the blowhole, and it was in the midst of giving a show!

It was definitely worth it, but the hike back to our car was awful as we were out of water and the sun was beating down on us. After feeling like I was going to die (maybe not really, but close!), we decided that this would be our last hike. We waited till our breathing was back to normal and then we headed back to our hotel to shower before the Luau.

The Luau was pretty neat. Upon entering, we were leid and I was given a flower and told that unmarried women wear it behind their right ear and married women wear it behind their left. Since I'm now married (yay!), I promptly put it behind my left ear.

We were given some Mai Tais and then shown to our table - luckily one with a decent view and we were one of the first tables to get food. Yay!

We were shown where the open bar and then allowed to wander until dinner was served. There was a pig roast going on (well, there was a roasted pig burried near the ocean), and musicians and different artists selling their wares. Seth bought me a necklace, and we also bought a Tiki statue. Then we headed back to our table for dinner and the show, which was a story of the Hawaiin people.

Day 3 of Honeymoon

Day 3, fortunately, did not start quite as early as Day 2. We didn't have to be up at the break of dawn in order to catch the sunrise, and since our hotel was on the west side of Maui, we weren't going to be any sunrises anytime soon. We got up around 7:00 and headed off to Kahului for our helicopter ride with Alex Air. We booked the Doors Off Tour that would go over West Maui and Molokai. Definitely worth booking!

The first thing they do after giving you the safety speech, is equip us with air flight suits. These suits were one piece suits that covered our jeans and shirts. This was to ensure that anything in our pockets wouldn't just fall out of the helicopter, you know, since there aren't any doors. We were allowed our camera and that was it. It needed a strap in order to ensure we didn't just drop it out the helicopter, and then we were on our way!

Us in our flight suits

Our doors-off helicopter

West Maui coastline

West Maui valleys

More coastline

I think this is Molokai

Waterfalls

Sea cliffs

Sea cliffs on Molokai reached 3,000 feet high

Elephant rock

Northern part of West Maui

Almost back to Kahului

Once we landed, we tipped our helicopter guy and headed back to our hotel in Ka'anapali Villas. We decided we might as well spend the afternoon on the beach again, since, hey, we're in Maui!

After a nice relaxing time on the beach, we headed back to the room to change into some real clothes and then went back to the beach to watch the sunset before going to dinner. We watched a lot of sunsets while we were there.