Maui wowi

Today, the weatherman did not disappoint, not that you really can disappoint in Maui. 

Arizona Adam was successful in gaining entry to the parking garage to retrieve the Fusion. He was a little tense, hoping that the concierge was correct with one of the two after hours entry codes that he gave the night before.  But his memory was intact and we loaded the car at 6:10 this morning (8:10 back in the GWN - great white north, aka Winterpeg). 

After a short 30 min drive and fueling up the car, we dropped it off at the Oakland airport and caught the shuttle to the terminal. There was one small glitch when printing bag tags when, of course, the tag for AA's bag printed, the machine went "out of order" - most likely due to the machine running out of bag tags to print on. Not to worry, the gate agent was able to print the remaining tag and we were on our way through security. 

After a short line at security, we made our way to a Chilis restaurant to grab breakfast. Just after we ordered, we could hear the call for preboarding for our flight. Lola started to panic but "the travel in' man" was as cool as ever saying they had lots of time. And they did - we finished our breakfast, not using the "to go" containers that were requested from the waitress and got on the plane. We weren't even the last ones to board this time, therefore NOT LATE. 

The Bay Bridge from above

The final glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge 

Our trusty B767 that got us to Maui 

We departed 10 minutes early and arrived in Kahalui Maui about 30 minutes early. A great way to start the next leg of our vacation. We got BOTH bags from the carousel, made our way to Avis to get our rental can and then we were on our way for some lunch. 

We are quite confortable driving around Maui, and rightfully should be - it's our third time here and we have a 2014 midnight blue Pasatt (Wolfsburg edition, whatever that means).  We were pretty pumped about that!

After lunch, we bought some gluten free waffles for Lola to have for breakfast and made our way to the hotel, but not before checking out the impromptu car show in the grocery store parking lot:

[No caption necessary, plus even if we did caption it I'm sure we would get the years wrong and someone would point it out ;]

We got all checked in, met with our "personal concierge" who gave us our welcome package, gift certificates for us to spend at the resort and booked us for a 90 min "vacation services" meeting - aka a sales pitch to try and buy into a timeshare. No need to worry, we are only going so we can get two free tickets to a show in Lahaina on Tuesday. 

After all the formalities were done, it was time to hit the beach!  We went and sat on the beach in front of our hotel/resort/complex and took in the sun. And whales - there was a huge pod, or several pods, of hump back whales right in front of us. No big breaches as they were in water that was pretty shallow, but still saw some fins and many water bursts from the whales blow holes. 

Those are kayakers but twice that distance (or maybe three times) were the whales

A link to a video of the whales: http://youtu.be/yMagiIgYUOU

We went to Lahaina for dinner to a restaurant called Lulus. The food was awesome, Lola having fish and Arizona A had chicken curry. Afterwards we went and got a few more groceries and are now sitting on the balcony enjoying the evening as Lola watches the Academy Awards from the balcony of course. 

Tomorrow shouldn't be too busy - a hike and then the beach. Probably some snorkelling too. I can't wait to use the go pro in the water, and turn it on this time...