Rain again the last two nights, but clearing up during the day. Not too hot, wind picking up. Friday morning we had to catch up with work - our publishing houses don't care a lot about where we are and what we do when proofreads are due - and sat at the pool working on New Orleans. After two days spent with a lot of driving, we afterwards just drove a couple of miles to the beach in the Launiupoko State Park. Though the rocky beach made it hard to get into the water, we enjoyed the sun and watched the whales on the horizon. Many of them! The Humpback Whales call the area their breeding grounds and between December and March it's the best time to watch them with their new-born calves. In spring they start migrating up to the feeding grounds in Alaska.
In the afternoon we walked to the Lahaina Chinese Museum - they had New Year's Celebrations going on all day, with demonstrations of all kinds and at 6 pm the lions started to dance (pic), firecrackers were ignited and they started a parade along main street. At the same time, it was 2nd Friday Town Party and in one of the parks there were Hula performers (music & dance) and art vendors sold Hawaiian artwork as the typical wood-carved masks:
Sunset was spectacular, though there were - as always - clouds coming up.
On Saturday morning we headed towards the South Coast, probably the most touristic strip of Maui. The beaches are plastered with hotels and condos from Kihei to Walea, getting more exclusive on the way south. We stopped at a fruit market on the way, but otherwise continued all the way to the end of the road, which was getting smaller and rougher.
The end point is La Perouse Bay, that's where a big lava flow from the Haleakala Volcano (in the background of pic below) reached the ocean decades ago. This fantastic volcanic landscape is protected nowadays. The ʻĀhihi-Kīnaʻu Natural Area Reserve includes a coastal lava field and is a popular snorkeling and diving site.
Just a small portion of the lava beach offers access to the ocean. Well, it would have been allowed to get into the water, if the waves wouldn't have been that high and conditions so windy. We just watched a handfull of adventurous snorklers and saw some tropical (yellow) fish (butterfly fish?) with our naked eyes. At Makena State Park, our next stop, we got some more "black sand" beach and - parking was a pain in the a,, again - finally ended a little further north at Big Beach, a partly sandy beach, for a rest. It proved to be horribly windy and there was the red flag set up which warned swimmers and surfers of the currents and waves. Just got our legs wet, that was it. It was even too windy to lay down on the beach, at the end we had sand everywhere.
Crusted with a mixture of sand and sunscreen we stopped in Kihei at the Maui Brewing Company - a much larger brewery than the Kuhula Brewery here in Lahaina. Amazing selection of IPAs, about ten different ones, and, they had Happy Hour till 5:30 pm with $ 10 pizza! Loved to eventually get a meal where price, quality and quantity were right! Back to the hotel early evening, called it a day and packed.
Finally, two birds we watched on the beaches: 1. the Myna bird, belonging to the starling family, which is omnipresent and VERY noisy. Originally a native to southern Asia (India) the bird has been introduced to parts of the U.S. including Hawaii; 2., a beautiful Cardinal (passerine bird/Sperlingsvogel) - not so common.
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