Hawaii- Maui

We took a nice long walk along the highway with my parents the next morning and admired the houses, landscaping, cobwebs, and spiders. The weather was just perfect, not too hot, not too cool, and the humidity was just right. We spent a good portion of the day at Kaanapali beach, or better known as Black Rock. It was a blast! I slipped into my wet suit and spent many hours body surfing, body boarding, and snorkeling. At one point during the day, Chelsea, Dad, and I were about to enter the water near black rock to snorkel and we saw people pointing and motioning and talking about seeing a turtle in the water. We rushed to put on our equipment and got into the water as soon as possible, but the water was so cloudy that the turtle slipped away. Later on in the day while I was body surfing, some more people began pointing excitedly at the water not too far off, so I ran up, got my snorkel equipment on, and booked it for the ocean. After a few minutes of searching, I saw it! I swam with that giant sea turtle for a good five minutes. When I felt too many people were crowding it, I did some more snorkeling near black rock and saw a lot of very cool fish. The snorkeling conditions were actually not that great, but seeing the sea turtle made it all worth it. The surf was definitely up and the waves had some serious power. I had fun trying to mimic a couple locals who crashed into incoming waves with their body boards and would complete full flips from the force of the impact. My collisions lacked some of the finesse that they had mastered. Dad, Chelsea, and I did a fair amount of snorkeling around black rock and I was proud of how long Chelsea snorkeled with us (she is not a fan of being in deeper ocean water). Because of the winter currents from the South, the water was quite cloudy and lacked the clarity and colors that mom and dad had experienced during past visits. The odd thing about the weather that day was that the rain would come and go throughout the day, but the sun always seemed to come back out. Fun Maui weather! We went back to the condo, showered, and went to a great local place for dinner, Aloha Mixed Plate in Lahaina. We sat outside on the patio and ate traditional Hawaiian local food: poi, shrimp, mahi mahi, Kalua Pork, and other good stuff. It was a great time chatting and enjoying the food, tiki torches, and scenery. We walked through Lahaina and did some window shopping, enjoyed some yummy ice cream (vanilla with coconut, macadamia nut, and caramel swirl) and saw the largest Banyan tree in the world. The banyan tree has roots that grow from the limbs downward. We saw many of them during our Florida trip last year, but this giant Banyan tree had been planted and modified by the locals over more than a hundred years to what it is today. Earlier on in the day, we had talked about playing games after going back to the condo. My dad was doing something on the computer and assumed that we would tell him when the game was ready, but when he turned around to check, we were all sound asleep!