Wednesday, Day 12 - Jan. 17 - 8am to 3pm, Kahului, Maui, Hawaii, USA

Maui is known as Hawaii’s Valley Island. It has many natural treasures on both land and sea including Iao Valley with the Needle rock formation, and spectacular beaches for swimming and diving. The first time we visited we rented a car and drove to the Iao Valley, did some shore diving and visited the magnificent, world-famous banyan tree in front of the old, Lahaina courthouse building and explored  Front Street with its shops, galleries and whaling history museum. We also went to a luau in the evening.

Lahaina is on the westward side of the island where we have docked twice; 2010 on the Amsterdam and 2015 on the Queen Elizabeth. On our last visit we took a ship’s tour to the fabulous Mt. Haleakala Crater. This is our first time docking in Kahalui across the island from Lahaina. Today we are doing a free ship’s tour, the Atlantis Submarine Adventure, leaving at 9:30am and lasting five hours. This dive tour includes two natural reefs and the wreck of the Carpathaian. The reefs are made up of finger coral and plate coral with lots of small cauliflower corals. The coral is not impressive, but there are lots of reef fish, some taking a very closeup look at our sub! The best part of the dive is when we see two White Tip sharks resting on the sand under the ship wreck.

 The light grey line on the sand in the ship's shadow is the first shark, the other is just above it.

Lahania has a very poor harbor and we have always encountered a problem getting in and out. The first time our tender rammed another boat trying to dock and shut the harbor down for over an hour and last time the harbor master got mad about something and held up our tender operations about an hour. Nothing has changed...they are dredging today and hold up the tender vessel for the sub both going and coming.

It is not a big deal, but does eat into the time we have to walk around Lahaina. It is a cute town with lots of little shops. Today we do have enough time to get a bite of lunch, fried calamari chunks in a mango chilli sauce, at the old hotel on the dock before meeting the bus that takes us back to the ship.

Historic Jail and Square. Hotel and shops in back ground.

We get back just as all aboard is called. From our balcony we can see the huge waves beyond the break water. We are in for a rough ride.  Jamie, the CD, has divided the passengers into groups based on where they are from and set up mini cocktail parties in various parts of the ship. If there are more than 5 from your country or state you have your own spot. There are 18 from Texas so we are assigned to the Navigator Lounge. The party starts at six and I think all 18 must show up. We visit with couples from Houston, Dallas, Austin and College Station while being served small tasty bits and cocktails of our choice.

By 6:30PM it has gotten progressively more bouncy so we decide to adjourn for dinner. When we get to the Compass Rose we learn that the pool side Hawaiian Dinner has been canceled due to wind and rough seas. That doesn’t deter us from having a very nice dinner of French onion soup, grilled lime fresh Ahi tuna with pineapple, coconut, cashew rice and avocado mango salsa for Dick. Carolyn has hearts of palm salad with green goddess dressing and spaghetti Bolognese. We top the meal off with Grand Marnier souffle with orange sauce and a side of Kaluah, yummmm!

With the ship rocking and rolling and a full tummy we head off to bed!

Tomorrow is the first of another four sea days in route to Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands over a thousand miles away.