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Russell writes…
Last night we left Oahu and sailed 88 nautical miles to Maui. Maui, the second largest Hawaiian island, is known for its natural attractions.
Our port was Kahului, where we docked at 8:00 am. In the 1880s, Kahului was the home of Maui’s first railroad, built to haul sugarcane. In 1900 a bubonic plague wiped out the entire town. Kahului was burned to the ground to eliminate the plague; the current town is a modern rebuild.
Our free Regent excursion today was a 4.5-hour trip to Maui Ocean Center and Iao Valley. Because this excursion required a lot of walking, there were not a lot of attendees.
Maui Ocean Center is the largest tropical reef aquarium in the Western Hemisphere and one of the top five aquariums in the US. We spent 2.5 hours here, which was probably an hour more than we needed. (But we didn’t discover the lunch restaurant until the very end, when it was too late to get anything to eat.)
Iao Valley is the site of one of the bloodiest battles in Hawaii’s history, fought in 1790 when King Kamehameha unified the Hawaiian islands for the first time. Today it is a State Monument and a National Natural Landmark. The most noteworthy feature is Iao Needle, also known as “the phallic stone of Kanaloa” (the Hawaiian god of the ocean).
We were back to the ship by 2:15, which gave us time for one more Maui highlight. Russell’s cousin Kym and her husband Steve were finishing up a week’s vacation in Maui. Though we all live in California, we don’t get to see each other very often. So Kym and Steve came down to the pier in their rented jeep and picked us up. We drove to a nearby mall to have ice cream and chat. (Kym and Gail had something called “ice cream rolls.” Steve and Russell opted for traditional Baskin-Robbins.) We spent the afternoon together chatting about family and adventures.
After setting sail at 6:00 pm, we enjoyed a slow and leisurely evening, with no hosted dinners and no specific plans. Tomorrow we will have one last port stop in Hawaii.
