New Year's Eve in Paradise

The island chain was inundated with rain on New Years Eve and in some cases flash flood warnings were issued. It is hard to go to the beach in rain, so instead we went shopping. In one of the stores (which can best be described as an Asian K's Merchandise), my brother and I bought these Asian pastries. After they thawed, we all tried a bit of it which had a really interesting texture. They were rubbery on the outside, and had a center that was thicker than pudding. Very different! After spending the day at the mall, we went to the beach where the clouds parted for a spectacular sunset. What a great way to end 2007!

These are the most unusual pastries I have ever tried!

A few days on Oahu...

After a wonderful week on Maui, we island hopped over to Oahu. I had been to Oahu 12 years ago, but was still amazing to see the difference in islands and in the change over the years. Oahu is a VERY busy island, and is best described as LA on an island. In Waikiki, I had a hard time finding a place on the beach big enough for my towel! Very busy, packed with Canadians given the dollar situation.

Here is a picture of the Honolulu airport on Oahu. Hope your pilot doesn't miss!

At King's Square, we found a really amazing spray paint artist (Art in Motion). In 15 minutes, he created two amazing paintings. Check out the transformation. If anyone gets out there, I would strongly recommend seeing one of his shows. He does things with spray paint that you would think would be impossible. Truly awesome!!!





His paintings sell very quickly, so we ended up going back a second night to try and buy a painting.

My mom got one!!

Road to Hana

This had to be the most memorable experience on Maui. Though the road is only 52 miles long, it contains approximately 620 curves. Because the road is narrow and can be quite stressful to drive, we signed up for a van tour. Our driver, Iwi, picked us up promptly at 7 am and took us to Kahului (the business center) for a continental breakfast. After breakfast, we met everyone in the van along the beginning of the highway. Iwi moved to Maui in 1993 and has been driving the road ever since (and does one hell of a job). He filled us in on many of the sights, and made the drive quite special. For those that get the chance to drive to Hana, I strongly recommend taking a van tour as the road is quite narrow in many places with several tight hairpin turns. Even though we covered just over 100 miles, it was a full day as we did not return to our condo till after 7 pm.

Rainbow Tree.

Hana highway cutting through the forest.

First of many black sand beaches.

Doug (my brother) and Kelly on the beach.

Waterfalls everywhere!

There she blows! This was a blowhole in the rocks.

Here are a few of the flowers that grow on this side of the island.

Even the flowers flower!

This is a picture of the seven pools. On a typical day you can swim in the pools, but because of all the rain in the mountains when we were there, the current was running around 30 knots and the pools were closed.