Maui - Day 3 - A Day on the Beach  − 5 March, 2007

Steph and I woke up early again. Beating the rush to the buffet. No Portuguese sausage today. Steph had lox and 1/2 a bagel. I had scrambled eggs and toast. Cereal. Coffee. I wasn't famished so a lighter breakfast seemed in order.

After that we took a tour of the hotel checking out the gardens and the museum-like quality of it's artifacts. All eastern cultural. Fun Buddhist ceramic fat dudes, ornate sequin-woven tapestries, Thai soldiers. Plus a closer look at the swans. The grounds are, by design, all-emcompassing. You can never leave the resort and feel like you've seen it all, as it were. But we're smarter than that.

We took a short walk south to an adjacent public beach. Nobody was there, so we had the tide pools all to ourselves. The crabs were shy. Hard to get on camera. The tadpoles, less so. The basalt rocks were slippery but made for excellent stoops when trying to get the crabs to think we were just statues and not hunters. To no avail. Every time you move they scamper, no matter how slight the motion. Quick dudes.

After that we went to town to rent some snorkel gear. The guy who rented us our mask and fins was also trying to sell us everything under the sun. Helicopter rides, snorkeling excursions, guided hikes. That would have been fine, but he also offered us $100 cash (which he showed us by pulling out a wad of $100's from his pocket) and said if we went to watch a 90-minutes spiel on timeshares he'd give it to us (the $100, not the wad). He went on to explain how it was legit and all, but my time's worth more than $100. We politely declined and he politely looked disappointed.

So we took our snorkeling gear and headed to Black Rock. The snorkeling was pretty neat. Very popular spot, so we bumped heads with some strangers. But I was surprised at how long you can essentially breathe under water. Eventually, the swimming and strained breathing takes its toll. But the fish are friendly. So friendly that they swarmed us for a minute there. It's a little creepy to be swarmed by fish, but hey, you only live once. Can't wait to go further down the island this week to some other locales. I got the snorkel bug bad.

Oh, I almost forgot to say. We saw wales again today. They're incredibly close to the beach. Maybe 1/2  mile off the coast. You can see them in the videos on this post. Very cool.

Tonight we're in search of some Kaluah pig. Maybe another night swim. Maybe a movie.

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