Our trip began in Maui, where we landed at 10:30pm local time. On paper, this seemed like a great idea. We’d land at bedtime, tired from our travels, and get a good night’s sleep for heading out on our first day’s adventures. Perfect, right? Huh.
For us there was a four hour time difference which really didn’t seem like it would be a problem. And maybe it wouldn’t have been if we didn’t get up at 5am at home. We’ve been getting up at 5am for more years than we’d like to remember. So imagine our surprise when we were both wide awake and ready to go at 3:30am! I guess our bodies figured that it was really 7:30am for us, and that was enough sleeping in! Of course nothing was open at that time of the morning, we didn’t even have our rental car yet, so we spent time watching reruns of Law and Order and finishing reading material from the plane.
We planned to spent three days acclimating ourselves to the time difference and taking leisurely drives and walks through the spots where locals hang out. This was a very good idea.
The Maui Swap Meet was our first stop. Although I love farmer’s markets at home, none of them compare to the Maui Swap Meet held on Saturdays, where fresh fruit (in February!) abounds and local artisans show their wares. We stocked up on as much fresh fruit as we could eat before it spoiled and began our 10-day quest to find the perfect, yet inexpensive, souvenirs. My only regret was that I didn’t buy more that day. I mistakenly thought that since I had found so many beautiful treasures that very first day that surely I would find more throughout the trip. This was not the case. Each island has a very different flavor, and although there are some things (think dashboard hula girl) that can be found everywhere, I never saw some of the really cool items from that day again.
The rest of the day was spent exploring. Driving the backroads and not really caring where we ended up. It was a perfectly marvelous way to begin a vacation.
