Hawaii!

The flight to Hawaii was uneventful. But arriving there was amazing! Perfect weather, beautiful skies, so much to look at! Going through customs, the immigration officer asked really did you go to all these countries on THIS trip? As this is not the first time I've had this sort of confrontation, I just smiled and said yes I've been gone for a year. He asked are you a student? And I took another breath and said no I'm a diplomat that is why I have that diplomatic passport you are holding. He looked at me incredibly confused, flipped through my passport a bit more, and then handed it back to me. He failed to stamp it but I didn't want to take the time to point that out. Then the normal airport hassles, finding my too huge bag and hauling it onto the shuttle to get to Enterprise for them to YET AGAIN not have the size car I booked and instead force me to pay more than my reservation because I don't want to take a pickup truck. Ugh. But how upset can one get in paradise?

I check into my condo and it is gorgeous!!!! A beautiful view of the sea from my balcony, a golf course at my door, a huge misty mountain in my backyard. Perfection. I go to the grocery store and have a near epileptic fit at the huge variety of stuff to buy, a whole aisle of cheese and whipped cream and sour cream and cream cheese and then the fruits and vegetables! Avocados that will taste like avocados!!!! Tomatoes that will have taste! Heaven. And Bagels!!!!! Hello old friends!!!! The place is so clean and people give me a wide berth to just explore and noone tries to step on me or sweep stuff over my feet and it is so beautiful. An aisle just for ice cream! What a country!!!! I'm so happy to be back in the USA!

I lounge, I read, I watch bad t.v., I do laundry, I make awesome fresh meals, I hang at the beach, I go to yoga - this is my first 18 hours in Maui. Actually at yoga I give a random woman a ride and turns out she owns a vineyard in the Willamette Valley in Oregon...my next stop! Crazy. And then I go pick up Michele! And it is so easy. I park the car, I walk to the baggage claim, she is there. There are no hordes and hordes of people camping out and clogging the only tiny little exit aisle that passengers can come through. Nope. This is America!!!!

I take Michele back to the condo and we go to the beach. We book ourselves a luau for later that night. Oh the luau! At the end of the day it was cheesetastic and a total tourist trap but the food was good, surprisingly so given how many people they were feeding, and the alcohol kept flowing and the dancing and singing and fashion show acts were entertaining. At the entrance they were giving everyone either a Mai Tai or some nonalcoholic drink. When Michele asked for a Mai Tai they carded her 35 year old self and then stamped her hand. I asked if I needed to show I.D. and the woman kinda laughed at me as she snidely said um no. Darn India has aged me! Like a lot. I gained about 20 pounds and 15 years of wrinkles. Worth it. We ended up getting total prom pictures taken at the entrance and then buying them. We went up on the stage to learn the hula. We got lost going through the hotel complex to try to find a cab.

At the condo, we decided we wanted to go out. So we walked across the golf course to what looked like a bar. We walked in the back door. Hmmmm no people. We keep walking through the restaurant until we come to a bar area with two dudes who look very much like they are closing up. Heavy metal is blaring. Michele asks if we can get a drink. The gentlemen very nicely tell her that the place is closed and they are just finishing up. She asks well where can we go then? And they call a cab and give a recommendation. They let us use their bathrooms. Michele uses the dude's room and then comes out to congratulate the nice guys on how well kept the dude's room is, something about wow it has soap and everything. Then, with Van Halen blasting, she tells them your music sucks. Making friends and influencing people wherever we go!!!! The cab comes. We leave.

Next bar. A sort of Mexican theme. Beer, we get local draft beers. Again Michele decides the music stinks. Her solution? Put $20 in the jukebox since she has no ones. The result? A few songs repeated multiple times because they are just that great and man it is hard to remember what one already played!!! Poison's Ain't looking for nothing but a good time and Lita Ford's Kiss Me Deadly got some pretty heavy rotation. There was dancing though there was no dancefloor. There were a lot of random conversations with barflies. All in all a pretty sweet night.

The next day was a bit ouchie. But we went to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful water and sand. We went to dinner at the restaurant on the golf course that we had terrorized the night before and that had been gracious enough to call us a cab. Good dinner. Another amazing sunset. We woke up early so that we could go to Haleakala National Park. Early morning driving through Maui and the amazing light. So many people surfing or on those stand up and paddle surfboards as we drive along the coast, huge cliffy misty mountain to one side and spectacular sea to the other. And then we turn more inland and there are sugar plantations surrounding us as we start driving towards the monster of a volcano that is Haleakala. So starting at sea level we drive maybe 30 minutes but gain 10,000 feet of elevation. At one point we drove right through a cloud! And it starts to be FREEZING. Yeah should have thought of that. But it is beautiful and crystal clear and we can see the hollowed out looking area with all the lava rocks in it and we are above the clouds so there is a mer de nuages and the air is so crisp and you can see for miles and miles and miles and the sea is gorgeous and some other islands are in view. Ah. Oh. Lovely. But alas, it is time to head back down and take Michele to the airport, twas a quick but eventful visit! And then there was just me again.