Part 6: Aloha Hawaii - Day 11, 12 and 13

So it was Goodbye and Thank you NYC...

The police box in Times Square

Farewell until next time,  and there will definitely be a next time, as you still have so much to show me 

And hello to Oahu, Hawaii, where I met up with my hubby who had flown in from New Zealand that morning.  

We caught a flight to Maui a couple of hours later...

A little different to Oahu!

It was about 6pm when we got there. I had booked a condo online Hale Pau Hana and by the time we had picked up the rental car and driven to Kihei where our condo was, it was getting on for dark, so we got to see our first sunset. Our condo was fabulous...on the 4th floor with marvellous views.  It's always hard picking a spot when you have never been somewhere before, bout I am glad we picked Kihei and not one of the resort beaches. We went for a drive later in our time there and the resort beaches like Wailea, Napili, Kaanapali, while very pristine, had a sterile feel about them

 We just decided to have a relaxing day and spend the time looking around our neighbourhood the next day.  Bad idea! It was soooo hot...Most days there were about 35 degrees C (95F). It wasn't so much the heat that bothered me; it was the humidity.  I love the heat, but I really struggled with the humidity. I was talking to a local later in the week and she said that she couldn't recall a September that had been as hot as this. Even the locals were struggling with it.  We ended up coming back to the condo and staying there for the rest of the day.  The one downfall here was there was only air-con in the bedroom and not in the lounge, so I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the bedroom!

Looking left from our balcony down the beach the next morning

We used this pool a lot!!

Hale Pau Hana

Hale Pau Hana

Our gorgeous beach

So Wednesday looked like more of the same temperature wise. It was a day for air-con we decided!  We set off for Kahului, the main township and headed for Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, which had,  most importantly, a fabric shop, a Sears for Tony and a variety of other shops.  It's an open air shopping mall, with a Farmer's Market on every Wednesday.

It didn't take long to find Sew Special. It's not a big mall! I had fun looking but didn't buy much; some OOP fabrics by AMH and Rashida Coleman.

It's a big store with a huge collection of batiks, Hawaiian fabrics, quilting cottons and notions

Sitting on our balcony

And then it was off to the next fabric store...Discount Fabric Warehouse. It looks a bit dodgy from the outside, but I was pleasantly surprised when I went inside.  A lot of stuff was crammed into this store!  Lots of Hawaiian fabrics, garment sewing fabrics, notions and sewing machines. I did find some Soft and Stable which I grabbed, but the fabric wasn't really to my taste.

The next store was Fabric Mart which was mainly Hawaiian fabrics as well.  I didn't buy anything here.

So we decided to drive the Road to Hana after this.  It connects Kahului and the little town of Hana and is only 64 miles (103 kms), but is incredibly torturous! It goes through lush rainforest and there are lots of things to stop and see on the way. In actual fact, it is more about the sights on the way rather than the actual town of Hana.  I wasn't sure what I expected, but I should have taken note of the website when it said there were 620 curves in the road and 59 bridges, many of which are one lane only.

We stopped at Paia, which is a laid back wee town with a population of around 2600.  It's the last town before hitting the highway properly.  We had a wander through the town, which took us all of 30 minutes. I did pop into Mana Foods, a fabulous little whole foods store which I just wished I could transport back to NZ!! I became totally addicted to kombucha while I was in Maui, which is a fermented tea that can be flavoured with all sorts of yummy things, so I grabbed some of that for the journey ahead.

Mana Whole Foods with Tony

The main street of Paia

The next stop was Twin Falls which is a waterfall about a half hour walk from the road. Some beautiful rainforest, birds and plants were seen on the walk. I imagine when it's been raining the falls are a lot more spectacular.

We continued our drive to Huelo Lookout. To our surprise 2 NZ girls were manning the stall, so we had a natter to them. They sell fruit, smoothies and juices.

We drove on a bit further, but both of us were getting rather tired of the turns and curves and the snail speed so we turned around at the 10 mile mark. We were also aware we did not want to be on this road in darkness!

Haleakala Crater

Haleakala Crater from the main road back to Kihei

And so it was back to the balcony to see another beautiful sunset