Heading East from Maui

It was a long day. We started with an early breakfast, packed our bags and took one more peek at the view outside of our Historic Hotel in the middle of Lahaina



We have spent the last few evenings outside our room looking at this scene and watching the cars and people pass by. There are two bars across the street and it was hard to get any rest because of the loud music and rowdy patrons. This morning it looks peaceful and quiet.

We loaded our luggage into our rental car and headed downtown towards the airport and ended up at the commuter terminal, which is not where you would normally catch a plane. I decided that it would be nice to take a flight with "the locals". It was quite the experience. Little was I prepared for what was in store. Since we were taking a small Cessna Turbo Prop, all the weight had to be accounted for. We had to have everything weighed and pay to bring our luggage aboard. First our luggage hit the scale, then we had to step on the scale ourselves along with our carry-on luggage & backpacks. They wrote our weights beside our names and the captain had to arrange where we sat on the plane, which carried 8 passengers



The lady that checked us in also had to do triple duty. She loaded our luggage onto the cart and pull them out onto the tarmac and waited for our plane to land. When the plane made its appearance she brought out those two lit battons and guided the plane to the parking spot where she unloaded the luggage of the disembarking passengers, and loaded our luggage into the compartments below the plane. Eventually our plane landed 45 minutes later and our luggage was unloaded and put next to the plane where we had to bring them to the terminal all by ourselves.

It surprised me that there was no security, no scanners and no one to check our luggage before we boarded the plane.

We eventually found our way to our rental car and drove 20 miles south into the small town of Kona where we finally had lunch at our favourite place across from the beach



I had a very tender, delicious, great tasting prime beef dip sandwich with salad. After lunch I headed across the street to show you this view



Today felt like a very warm day into the mid 80's (around 29C) . We tried to check in earlier but we were told to come back after 3pm, so we went to the local KTA supermaket in Kailua and picked up a couple of steaks, condiments, sweet bread, eggs, bacon and juice, Oh and a tub of Ice-cream. We always buy ice cream so we can sit outside and enjoy the sunset. It almost feels like home here as we know where everything is from our last visit. We even stopped at the local Costco in search of Shrimp and prawns.

Buy the time we get settled and get our steak dinners ready it is dark.



We managed to find a Condo with the ocean right outside our balcony. The waves make such a racket because they are so close



The sun had just set. If you had been looking a mere 10 minutes earlier you would have seen this . . .


(view from outside our lanai)

Another ordinary, spectacular sunset from Kona, on the Big Island of Hawai'i .