Maui!

Maui is full of cool little beach towns. It wasn't what I was expecting--not in a bad way, noooo, but I was expecting to land on the Jurassic Park island and instead it has these kind of dry mountains on the coasts and pockets of intense greenery inland. Plus it's this eeny-weeny island; the day Dan and I went snorkeling we realized we had half the day left and checked up the Iao Valley and drove a third of the road to Hana. Then I had a very delicious mahi-mahi sandwich at the P'aia Fish Company or something like that. Oh, there was a lot of delicious food in Hawaii. They're onto something with their sushi rice snacks and their marinated raw fish (I thought it was all about the poke until I had the lomilomi salmon); umbrella drinks, sure, but there's also something to be said for the coffee at ABC. Plus our B&B hostess knows the value of a little baked breakfast with ice cream. Restraint was not in order.

Our first try snorkeling was cool but a little iffy--we borrowed stuff from our B&B, Dan didn't have fins, and we kind of almost drowned a little. The next day we went on a trip to the Molokini Crater, a partially submerged volcanic cone, which trip was wonderful. Christina recommended going through the Pacific Whale Foundation and was so very right; the staff was great and the reef tour included a bunch of sea turtles. They got all up in our grill; it was just great.

We also went to a luau for some feasting and hula. They cooked a pig in a pit and kept the mai tais coming; this was where we realized that 90%+ of visitors to Maui are honeymooners or faux-honeymooners rekindling their vows or whatever. "Are you on your honeymoon?" "Are you on your honeymoon?" "Are you on your honeymoon?"

"No, we're just on vacation"

"..." (blank stares).

It's not an insult. We just looked happy. But I didn't know we were the only boyfriend-girlfriend couple in the history of the world to go on vacation together. Dating couples! Get it together! Trips are the way to go! Just check out the pictures. Yessssss.