Port 10 Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

Aloha!

We’re back at Maui today, but on the Lahaina side this time. We have pretty skies with the sun peeking over Maui and shining on Molokai in the distance. We are greeted with whales, and Joy was surprised with two whales breeching off our balcony as we head into harbor! Too fast for a picture, but exciting!

When we opened the cabin door to go to breakfast we found a letter that states our itinerary has changed and our Around the World cruise is no longer going around the world! Whirled! I reported this out earlier in a Point of Interest: Major Itinerary Change, but this is where it happened in the Port of Call flow.

Here’s what our new itinerary looks like:

OK, the bad news is behind us.

We heard the banyan tree is the place to meet, so we wanted to see it. It is clearly easy to find! Those of you who already know Lahaina already know this. This is our first time here.

Going under the banyan tree, it’s wide open and bright – lots of benches for waiting for your friends! Nice!

Our zodiac whale watching tour two days ago in Kahului was cancelled so we booked a tour on our own in Lahaina. We have a little time to kill so we take a walk to see what the award winning Front Street is all about.

Joy was looking for some new sandals. We found a nice little leather shop and met this wonderful gentleman. He specializes in making custom sandals based on a sandal design the Roman hoplite soldiers wore.  $250 for a woman, $275 for a man. Have someone trace your foot when you are standing fully erect and submit the traces to place an order.  Go online to www.islandsandals.com for details. Any takers? These aren’t the type of sandals Joy wanted.

Here are a few happy snaps of Lahaina’s Front Street. Enjoy!

When it’s finally time to meet our tour we head to the meeting spot near the marina, by Slip #4.  We are cruising with PacWhale Eco Adventures! But this is not our boat. This is the Ocean Legacy. We need the Ocean Explorer.

That is our boat, waiting for dock space to open up so it can drop off the current passengers and pick us up!

Ocean Explorer waiting outside of the marina

We climb on the Ocean Explorer with a bunch of folks we don’t know, most of them not masking. The seats are actually surprisingly comfortable! Joy and I are in the next to last row, which is elevated about 10 inches above the rows in front of us.  The row behind us is another 10 inches higher!

The marina is beautiful! And we are about ready to head out on the whale hunt!

We had Captain Dan, Andi as 1st mate and naturalist, and Cat as 2nd mate.

On our way out we passed one of our ship’s lifeboats being used as a tender to ferry us to shore and back.

And we see our ship – Insignia at Maui! So… is that gray stuff up the hillside a solar farm? or a marijuana farm?

And we have a UFO sighting!

As I said in the Point of Interest: Major Itinerary change – Can you say whales! Whales! WHALES!

We saw a lot of whale activity, and followed a mother and her calf for a while. The calf was breaching like it was all it wanted to do! And when it didn’t want to do that anymore it would slap its tail repeatedly, clearly excercising the new muscles it was developing!

We also witnessed spy hopping, where a whale bobs straight up so its head and eyes clear the water, so it can see what’s out on the water. The best episode of this was when a boat was playing audio of whales calling each other and a real whale spyhopped next to the boat, looking for the whale in the audio recording.

Finally, we saw a lot of breaching!  We saw young calves do this a lot! And mature whales did it a few times.

And we say goodbye to Maui. The sunset colors are not as intense as usual, softly forming between Lanai and Molokai.

Aloha! Next stop is the Big Island at Kailua-Kona.