The Swamp

Looks like I'm going to get to take BSFGF on a work trip in January to Maui.

I've never vacationed this far away as a full fledged adult human. Any tips/tricks/things we can't miss?

Right now we're getting our airfare/hotel taken care of, so there's the option of picking up the difference to fly business/first I would assume, as well as trying to figure out a budget for the time we're there (I don't believe this is an all-inclusive kind of thing).

I defer to you frogs. Anyone been before? Any awesome stories? Are most of the sheds there wood or plastic?

I hear you get a good deal on a van on the beach. Sleeps three comfortably. Smells of BO, patchouli, and crushed dreams. Please contact DiS for more details.

Mount Haleakala is pretty awesome. I didn't get up there for the sunrise or sunset, but I've heard that's a rather spectacular sight. There are vendors that will take you to the top and then give you a bike to coast down. That looked like a lot of fun.

Other than that, I don't remember much about our visit to Maui. Mrs. Sabo and I enjoyed the other islands much more than Maui. But that isn't to say it sucks.

duff wrote:I hear you get a good deal on a van on the beach. Sleeps three comfortably. Smells of BO, patchouli, and crushed dreams. Please contact DiS for more details.

That goes so perfectly with my avatar.

Highway to Hana is great if you want to spend several hours terrified you're going to drive off the side of a cliff.

However if you do choose to drive the Highway to Hana, this place is on the trip from the West (most resorts, I think) to the East (highway) and I can't put into words how awesome the ono sandwich was.

What Mr. D and Sabo said.

Downtown Lahaina is OK. Some pretty decent shops, bars and restaurants. You'll not confuse it for Honolulu.

But if you're in Maui, the beaches are spectacular. For people who have to choose between the different Hawaiian islands, that's the draw if you're picking Maui (not that you had a choice, but that's OK. You'll be happy in Maui).

Nightlife, dining, etc is better on Oahu. Kauai and the Big Island are prettier. Maui is more laid back and there's a decent mix of all of the different stuff going on on the other islands.

Yeah Maui is mostly for families and honeymooners. Beaches are very quiet which makes them awesome and relaxing unlike Waikiki which is a zoo.

I got so dizzy driving to Hana and back.

Down south there is an awesome breakfast place in Kihei. And the Wailea outdoor mall is interesting too.

Been a while since I was there...but things i recall and quick googles
Good places to just get a snorkel and put your face in the water, Turtle Town, Honolua Bay, and Black Rock (buy a cheap snorkel set ...you don't need a tour)
If you want to pay to snorkel..Molokini Crater or a tour near Lanai (wild dolphins and what not).There is some solid hiking on the island. Waterfalls and self guided well marked jungle hikes. Lots of books available.

You can visit the Ancient Forests of Iao Valley. This is near a botanical garden (This is the site of the bloody Battle of Kepaniwai where over ten thousand warriors of King Kamehameha I fought for control of the island.)

Counterpoint: Don't snorkel in Maui. (See the N. Jersey thread.)

wlu_lax6 wrote:If you want to pay to snorkel..Molokini Crater or a tour near Lanai (wild dolphins and what not).

We snorkeled Molokini Crater. It was OK at best. The coral reef was in pretty rough shape, and there weren't a lot of fish there. But it's cool to say you snorkeled an ancient volcanic crater.

The Hakalakeiayeie sunrise thing seemed overrated but was still cool. Do this on your own in a rental car.

Road to Hana was great, we did a tour and I would probably recommend that for reasons Mr. D stated. It's a tough drive, especially if you're looking at shit.

The scenery there is amazing but the island bored me after 5 days or so. Maui Tacos is a Moes-type chain that somehow has the best pina coladas on Earth. I much prefer Honolulu because I like cities but you can definitely keep busy on Maui sightseeing for a week.

Taking off on Friday for our big trip. Any last minute suggestions? We don't have anything booked, but figure we can pick and choose what we're up for while we're there. Snorkeling (because BSFGF isn't so keen on learning to SCUBA) is probably happening. May do the bike ride down the mountain at sunrise thing, that sounds fun. Other than that there are 2 breweries within 1.5 miles of where we're staying in Lahaina, so those will be visited.

Just looking for anything last minute if anyone missed this the first time around. Regardless, I got to go back over it and laugh at the great shed debate of July 2016. Ahh simpler times.

Note that it's cold as fuck for the bike ride down. Just FYI. And if the bus isn't on time, call them, because they probably fucked up and forgot you. No worries, they'll cover part of the money you spent on a cab covering for their fuck-up.

Gunpowder wrote:The scenery there is amazing but the island bored me after 5 days or so.

Yup. Don't regret going, would never go back.

mister d wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:The scenery there is amazing but the island bored me after 5 days or so.

Yup. Don't regret going, would never go back.

Good. My first vacation out of the Midwest will be completely forgetable. Can't wait for the upcoming 11.5 hours on a plane!

No, its not that. I'm trying to think of a good comp. Like a really good restaurant you still don't need to go to again because you'd rather try something new?

We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

Giff wrote:We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

Why not do both? Inter-island flights are available and not insanely expensive. Three or four days in both places sounds about right as the amount of time you'd probably want to spend on each.

brian wrote:

Giff wrote:We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

Why not do both? Inter-island flights are available and not insanely expensive. Three or four days in both places sounds about right as the amount of time you'd probably want to spend on each.

We will look into that. I wanted to go to Oahu to go back to Pearl Harbor. I went when I was 10 and it's still a vivid memory for me that I'd like my wife to share.

In hindsight, we definitely should have done that, but we got lazy and just stayed in Maui.

Giff wrote:We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

Kauai definitely has my vote. The least crowded and most diverse landscape. I'd live there if I didn't have to travel for my job.

GoodKarma wrote:

Giff wrote:We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

Kauai definitely has my vote. The least crowded and most diverse landscape. I'd live there if I didn't have to travel for my job.

I agree it's worth seeing, but I don't feel like there's really enough to do to as far as a weeklong vacation. It's small, there's not a lot of restaurants or nightlife and the beaches are better on Oahu and Maui. But I do think a split trip between Kauai and Maui is pretty smart because the islands are so dissimilar in a lot of respects. (For what it's worth I prefer the Big Island to any of 'em.)

Giff wrote:We're going to Hawaii in September, but haven't picked an island. The wife wants Maui and I want Kauai.

I think it all depends on what you want to do. If you want to sit in a nice resort and sip cocktails while on a beach, then you can't go wrong with either island. If you want to shop, Maui's a much better option.

Personally, I'd go back to the big island in a heartbeat. It's pretty awesome because you get a variety of environments. You can switch from a rainforest to a Mediterranean type of climate in an hour's drive. Volcanoes National Park is really, really awesome. The Chain of Craters drive is fantastic, especially the Hilina Pali overlook. One downside with the big island is there aren't many sandy beaches compared to the likes of Maui and Oahu, but there are black sand beaches if you want something unusual.

Dont go to the big island if you think your wife would complain incessantly about a volcanic wasteland with like, 4 towns on it

BSF21 wrote:Looks like I'm going to get to take BSFGF on a work trip in January to Maui.

I've never vacationed this far away as a full fledged adult human. Any tips/tricks/things we can't miss?

Right now we're getting our airfare/hotel taken care of, so there's the option of picking up the difference to fly business/first I would assume, as well as trying to figure out a budget for the time we're there (I don't believe this is an all-inclusive kind of thing).

I defer to you frogs. Anyone been before? Any awesome stories? Are most of the sheds there wood or plastic?

BSF - check this manta rays thing out. It was awesome.

Gunpowder wrote:Dont go to the big island if you think your wife would complain incessantly about a volcanic wasteland with like, 4 towns on it

Yeah, but it's the most awesomely beautiful volcanic wasteland you'll ever see.

Just as a thanks to you kids, we got back late last night and I'll catch you up.

7.75 days in Maui we learned:

-- BSF can hang for approx 6.5 days of in and out 24 hour drinking before falling into total zombie mode in Lahaina for the day.

-- There is SO MUCH TO DO. Especially when you want to spend some time just relaxing/drinking on the beach/by the pool. We did plenty of everything and we're ready to come home, but there was so much more still to explore. Everything just becomes a blur when you're there, especially as the open bars continue to flow. The company had a free "Breakfast Bar" from 8:30-11am every morning which was totally open. I drank a lot of "Screw-Ups" which was like a Screwdriver but they use some pineapple orange guava mix that is like Heroin. Add that to bourbon/beers at night and...

-- BSFGF is way more of a gamer than I give her credit for. Which leads to the second point:


The Good:

- Some of you might have seen on FB, BSFGF got a ring and is now FutureMrsBSF. I asked her at the top of Mount Haleakala at sunrise, and then we got on bikes and had a frustrating ride down, more on that later. But sincerely thanks to you that suggested that. The tour up was wonderful and as perfect of a moment as I could have asked for her to have. She is very happy.

- The walking. We must have averaged 25-30K steps most days. We walked everywhere. We were about 2 miles walking north of the very south tip of Lahania (probably 3.5 into the center of town) -- We walked it. We walked up to Maui Brewing Company's Brewpub almost 5 miles north of us (we shouldn't have walked it but I'm bad at approximating distance on maps). We were about 1.5 miles south of Black Rock and we walked up to and past that almost every day for something. It was super nice especially with all the drinking to feel at least a little active.

- FutureMrsBSF (OK, I'm tired of it already, she's Meg) went all in one night while drinking and blurted out that she wanted to just try SCBUA instead of just snorkling. We used a small newer outfit from there that only had 2 people and had a private dive with one of them. Meg had a tough time but still really enjoyed herself and our instructor was fantastic with her. Spent almost 2 hours working directly with her and for most of that was content to let me swim around the reef with my GoPro and check shit out. Would recommend this company to anyone and plan to write a very nice TripAdvisor review for them.

- WHALE SEASON. Holy shit they are everywhere. We went on a 2 hour whale watch on a small boat, maybe 20-25 of us, and the only bad part about it was that we saw some Planet Earth shit in the first 25 minutes and spent the last hour and a half trying to top it. First 25 we caught a full on breach about 75 yards for the boat, some huge aggressive behavior between some dudewhales trying to get with a ladywhale. Slapping fins and shit. Looking forward to checking out the video on the GoPro. Then saw a momma with her babywhale. Also super neat. PS: While diving, you can hear them singing from miles away. Sureal.


The Meh

- 2 Breweries on the island. Maui Brewing Co's Brewpub on the northwest shore was AWESOME. Tons of great beer, food was fantastic. They have this chilled ice rim around the bad that you can keep your beer cold on. Killer experience and not too expensive. It's under the Meh because the other one on the island is Kohola Brewing and they just didn't have the fire. Beer was just OK. Place was pretty empty on a Saturday afternoon with sorta OK weather. So hit and miss.

- Ride down Haleakala. They say you're supposed to be an "experienced rider" on our tour. Our group had several that were not. Also, you no longer get to go down from the summit, you have to bus back down to 7000' and start there. This was mixed because it gave us more time with our guide Doug, who was a big ass 400lb native Hawaiian and, though a bit corny with the Ohana stuff, was very knowledgeable and fun. He made getting up at 1:45AM for the tour a little less rough. However, biking down behind people (I was in the back because I was tallest and manliest), all single file, no passing, no riding next to each other, was basically 2 hours of "oh look how nice the view is, SHIT, brakeeeebrakebrake" because the people in front of us got scared of going over 15 mph. So it was go to the top, get engaged, have this wonderful flood of emotion and closeness, and then be immediately separated for the next 2 hours. That kinda sucked.

- The Food. Again, in the Meh because some was awesome. Both Frieda's and Honu in Lahaina were family owned places and phenomenal. A little pricey, but just killer food and Meg's favorite cocktails on the trip. Also the first day we got there, we were still pretty much EST so we were up like shots at 3:30 AM. We waited for a bit then started walked and ended up at this place north of Black Rock with some bomb ass breakfast. The food at Maui Brewing was great, and the freshest Ahi we had all week. We had to deal with some resort food and buffets, so that was weak and some of the other stuff in Lahaina got crazy good reviews and we found to be just OK.


The Bad:

- My liver hurts.

- I am not built for that plane ride and we found out during the red-eye home that neither one of us sleep on planes. This lead to being awake-ish for approx 36 straight hours on the way home. Not as fun.

- Didn't spend nearly as much time hiking or at the beach as we would have liked. That's our own fault but time just gets away from you.


I'm sure there's more thoughts in there but my brain is still mush. Thanks to all you cats for your suggestions. You all helped make it a super fun trip. I'd go back in a heartbeat, but maybe stretch the travel a little more.

Congrats again my friend!

I either missed it or liked it when I was drunk, but congrats!!

BSF21 wrote: - WHALE SEASON. Holy shit they are everywhere. We went on a 2 hour whale watch on a small boat, maybe 20-25 of us, and the only bad part about it was that we saw some Planet Earth shit in the first 25 minutes and spent the last hour and a half trying to top it. First 25 we caught a full on breach about 75 yards for the boat, some huge aggressive behavior between some dudewhales trying to get with a ladywhale. Slapping fins and shit. Looking forward to checking out the video on the GoPro. Then saw a momma with her babywhale. Also super neat. PS: While diving, you can hear them singing from miles away. Sureal.

Jealous of that. One of my top life moments was swimming in open water with dolphins off Belize. Their "chatter" is incessant when you're submerged.

BSF21 wrote:- I am not built for that plane ride and we found out during the red-eye home that neither one of us sleep on planes. This lead to being awake-ish for approx 36 straight hours on the way home. Not as fun.

Neck pillow + drugs

Congrats to BSF and the future MrsBSF!

We're going Kauai in March with 5 other couples. Really looking forward to it.

Congrats!

Congrats man!

Congrats. Hope you got to "feel close" again after your reached the bottom of the mountain.

DaveInSeattle wrote:

We're going Kauai in March with 5 other couples. Really looking forward to it.

Oh, hey, make sure you know everyone elses safe words too.

"Aloha"

mister d wrote:"Aloha"

"humahumanukanukaapuaaAAAAAAHHHHHHHH"

"Mahalo, bitches"