Saturday, January 19, 2008: Maui.
Bob: We arrived at Maui shortly before dawn, so I hopped out of bed to run up on deck and take pictures. It was dark and the ship was deserted, so while I waited for the sky to lighten up I took pictures of the ship's pool deck. As dawn approached I noticed the mountains rising up out of the water on either side of us. Maui looks a little like a huge figure "8" with one mountain in the center of each loop of the "8" and the lowlands including the cruise ship dock are in between them. Curiously, one mountain had a cloud top cover while the other one was quite clear. We slowly crept into the harbor and docked at Maui a little after sunrise, and I went down to breakfast. |
Monika: Bob woke up early and tried to get dressed and sneak out of the room very quietly. I tried to get back to sleep, but when I noticed that we were getting close to Maui and it was getting light, I got up also, grabbed my camera and headed up to the forward viewing area on deck 11. I first made one trip around the deck to see whether I could find Bob, but then started to take pictures while we were slowly approaching Maui. Of course, we were also looking for whales, and with many people looking, one person finally spotted a blow (no, they did not yell "Thar she blows", only Bob does that). But everyone looked anyway. I also spotted Bob one deck higher and went to join him. But the railing on deck 12 was not meant for people that are 5'2". It is just in front of my eyes. I grabbed a little table and climbed on that, but such a precarious perch made picture taking in low light even more iffy. So I went back down to deck 11, where I could put my camera on the railing and get some decent pictures of the harbor area that we were approaching. Once we were in the harbor, we saw a couple of dolphins who were hightailing it back out ("watch out guys, biiiiig ship is coming"). |
Bob: We ended up making three forays onto the island. Our first attempt at sightseeing was to take the free shuttle bus out to Hilo Hattie's shop which was across the narrow saddle of land that connects the two mountains of Maui. The ride was a pleasant, low-cost way to see a bit of the island, but it didn't really get us near any of the tourist sites so we turned around and took the next shuttle right back to the ship. Along the way out we saw a swap meet (AKA flea market) that looked quite large and interesting, and on the way back we saw the Bounty music shop on the Hana highway quite near the ship, so after unloading some Hawaiian calendars that we had purchased at Hilo Hatties back in our cabin, we turned right around and set off for the flea market. This time we were walking, which was slower than the bus of course, but guided by my GPS we made it back to the flea market without any hitches. We had to pay 50 cents each for an entrance fee and inside we found maybe one to two acres of booths set up by what I would call professional sellers as distinguished from amateur sellers like garage sale folks. The prices were correspondingly steep, so don't expect any real deals if you ever get out to Hawaii and go to one of those swap meets, but we did find some hand carved and painted fish, some wooden bookmarks, a belt for Monika, and a small carved sea turtle that we liked enough to purchase. Following the GPS back to Hana Highway, we found the Bounty music store right on our path and went in to look over the ukuleles. I found a very nice baritone ukulele with a good sound for $89, and Monika was kind enough to buy it for me as a gift. Getting a case, instruction book, extra strings, and all that jazz raised the ante a bit, but it still seemed like a fairly minor investment to explore a new instrument that I could hopefully sing with. I was very happy with my new instrument and really looked forward to learning to play it. So, new ukulele in hand we trundled back to the Pride of Aloha, stowed our purchases--the ukulele just fit where the life jackets were stored above the closets--and rested a bit before our final foray onto Maui for a whale watching boat trip. |
Monika: After the ship docked, we had breakfast and then got ready to go out. Our whale watching tour was not until the evening, so we decided to see the town first. In particular, Bob wanted to check out a ukulele store. In the port area were a couple of phones with complete phone books. Bob found the address for one store and we tried to figure out where it was. Once outside was the usual free shuttle for "Hilo Hattie". This one took us clear across the island. Our bus driver was a very personable, chatty guy and we found out all about the local sugar cane production. We also saw a big flea market relatively close to the ship. Once at Hilo Hattie, a souvenir shop, we looked around and actually found 5 Hawaiian calendars (all different) for $1.--. Well, we never could resist a bargain. There was not much to the mall, so we hopped on the next bus to take us back across the island, between the two mountains to our ship. We passed the ukulele shop on our way. So now we knew were to go. We dropped off our calendars in our cabin and hurried back. The crew was having their lifeboat drill, and as we were walking to town we watched a lifeboat getting lowered, and other lifeboats already in the water. They really are thorough with these drills. We first went to the flea market to check out their ukuleles. It was a rather large affair of mainly new merchandise. Not so much fleamarket as arts and crafts market. We found exactly one guy with three ukeles and they seem to be rather high priced. Otherwise there were lots of clothing stalls, jewelry stalls, and some folks selling wood carvings. I needed a belt to keep my capri pants from falling and found a rather nice one that was woven of different color yarns. We also could not resist a couple wooden fish and a wooden turtle. Two wooden bookmarks rounded out our purchases. We then went to the ukulele store. They really had a large variety of ukes in all price ranges. Bob settled on a baritone uke that has a very nice mellow sound. We also bought a case and instruction booklet and decided to carry it with us rather than mailing it. Thus loaded down we went back to the ship for lunch. |
Bob: It turned out that the whales like the shallow bay on the southern coast of Maui, so we once again had to take a shuttle bus down across the isthmus connecting the two mountains to get to the marina for our tour. Our ship was a jaunty catamaran motorboat that was being operated by the Pacific Whale Foundation. Well, those were the same folks who had sponsored the shipboard presentations on the whales, fish, and cetaceans of Hawaii, so I felt like the tour was operated by folks who really cared for the whales in particular and the marine environment in general. We could see whales spouting from the shore ("Thar she blows! Avast, Matey!"), so I was anxious to get on board the ship and get out to sea before they left for the evening or whatever they do at night. We got one of the front topside seats and so had a good 180 degree view of the surrounding seas. Fortunately the whales stuck around until we arrived on the scene and then we slowly and quietly followed a pod of males that were apparently competing for access to a female. |
Monika: We had booked an afternoon whale watching cruise. A bus took us again to the other side of the island where we boarded a ship from the Pacific Whale Foundation. The ship had seats in front that were in stadium seating style and we got two good seats up on top. Our captain took us out to where he had been told there was a competition pod (a group of males fighting for a female). And we did follow this group of about 8 to 10 whales until sunset. |
Bob: This "competition pod" consisted of at least 8-12 males, possibly as many as 20, and they certainly put on quite a show for us as the sun slowly sank toward the horizon. All we have really ever seen previously of humpback whales were their humped backs, but because of this male competition we saw a whole lot more. The competition pod was often kind of milling around each other with spouts blowing into the sky and dorsal fins weaving around each other in a complex way what looked almost like a choreographed dance. Sometimes one bull would pop his head in the air and do either a head slap to intimidate the other bulls or a more direct butting of the side of a competitor. Other times they would slap their pectoral fins in the water, which was apparently an intimidation tactic. Occasionally we would also see their tail flukes as they kind of flipped up their tail preparatory to a deeper dive. We might have even seen an "eye hop" where the whale juts up perpendicularly about 1/3 out of the water so he can look around. Wow! Need I say that these creatures are really, really big, majestic and, considering they are as large and heavy as many busses, surprisingly graceful. |
Monika: . They were blowing, not quite breaching but coming up way out of the water, pec slapping, tail slapping, and one even put his head out of the water for a spy look. It was enormous fun. Once two whales even came up close to the boat. We tried to get as many pictures as we could and decided, we would cull them later. The boat served drinks, Mei Teis, beer, and soft drinks and some snacks. So a good time was had by all. |
Bob: The pod was extremely active for an abnormally long period of time, according to our Captain, but that gave us enough time to try to take enough pictures that we could hope that at least a few would actually turn out OK. The sun was slowly setting as we snapped our last few pictures, and after set our Captain turned the boat around and headed back to shore. Right outside the mouth of the marina as we were returning to port, however, we saw a solitary whale breach in a rather spectacular fashion. Unfortunately it was already almost completely dark by then and even using an 800 ISO setting the sea was too dark to get a decent picture of it. Still, it was proof positive that much of the behavior we observed during the day continued unabated at night. We were both hungry, so we headed directly to the buffet when we re-embarked and had a late dinner. Then we settled back into our cabin for the night. Monika downloaded and backed up the whale pictures and then we both looked at them to see if we had any clear ones. We had to eliminate a lot of blurry pictures, which was understandable given that we were taking pictures of moving critters from a rocking, moving boat, but there were a few acceptably clear shots also and that was exciting. We both also used the computer to update our journals before we finally gave up and turned in for the night. |
Monika: . The captain remained out there till the sun had set, and we even got some "whale at sunset" pictures. He then hightailed it back, and we saw out last whale on the way back to the harbor. Altogether a very enjoyable excursion |
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