Wrapping up our trip to Maui

Now that blogging about Maui is done. It’s time to wrap it up with a few thoughts. This being the first “real” international trip I’ve taken since the pandemic, I’m glad it went as planned without much disruption! If you’ve spent the time to read through the trip, I appreciate it! If not and you want to, you can find the whole trip here. Here we go!

Top 3 Highlights

Highlight #1: Learning to Surf

Initially, I was a bit nervous about doing this. If you know me, I don’t always feel super comfortable on the water. So engaging in a pretty water intensive activity didn’t seem like it would be at the top of my list. But to my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be a lot of fun! While surfing is SUPER tiring, I am happy that I had the chance to “learn” a new skill. Feeling  that sense of accomplishment of being able to stand up on the board is pretty cool. I’m not under any illusion that I would be able to do this unassisted without the instructor, but nonetheless it still feels pretty great!

Highlight #2: Road to Hana

If you asked me at the start of the trip, what I predict the highlight would be, it’d be the Road to Hana. But unfortunately, I found that a good number of the “attractions” felt a bit underwhelming. Why is it still a highlight? The road itself. While there are some pretty stellar views scattered throughout the drive, I think the drive is what really stood out to me. It can be a bit of a challenging drive with the narrow and windy roads. And I think therein lies a lot of the fun. Either being a passenger and watching the car navigate it, or being in the drivers seat and going through it myself I really enjoyed this aspect of it. To me this was very much about the journey vs the destination.

Highlight #3: Hanging Out!

In general, we didn’t do a whole lot while in Maui. There was a lot of eating, driving and simply hanging out. I think that’s the highlight here. Whether it be with the original four of Antetokounmpo, Lebron, Cactoose and myself. Or with the addition of Legend and Gimpy on the last few days. I really enjoyed the times we simply “hung out”. We had tons of discussions in the car, airBnB or a random mall food court. We listened and sang along to tons of songs while on the road, or even discussed dating and online dating situations. It was really cool to be amongst friends after two years of COVID and the isolation that comes with it.

Favourite Meal

While we ate a lot of food during this trip, my most memorable meal is the one we had at MonkeyPod. The food is good, and being able to share the meal with friends is great! What makes this meal memorable is some of the shenanigans that took place. Somehow lunch turned into mai tais and shots for the table. Everyone had a good time, the patio setting in Hawaii was excellent and simply enjoying each other’s company makes this a super memorable meal!

If I could change the itinerary…

I would have changed my “approach” to Maui. If you are familiar with how my previous trips are, it’s typically exploratory, or destination focused. I don’t think I was quite ready to “sit back” and “relax”. Meanwhile I think most travelers to Maui go there for that specific reason. With this in mind, I think I would have planned for a slightly longer stay, but also at the same time changed my mentality for this trip. I would have maybe spent a little extra money and found a resort’ish’ place to do “nothing”. I think Maui is geared for this and I didn’t quite appreciate that. My intention was to “do / explore” things when maybe sitting by the pool or on a beach would have been better served. So for me, if/when I go back to Maui, I would start with the relaxation premise and plan from there.

What surprised me?

There isn’t “a lot” to do in Maui. While I’ve heard that Maui is much more “low key” than Oahu, I didn’t expect it to be “this low key”. Similar to the change in itinerary, I think my mindset was starting to struggle with finding things to “kill time”. I wasn’t really in a “relaxing beach mode” and so when presented with it, it surprised me. I think this goes back to my initial outlook for the trip and this was truly more a “vacation” then “travel” if that makes sense.

One memorable story from this trip

Being a bit of a plane geek, I’m always excited whenever air travel is involved. On the other hand, Cactoose isn’t a big fan of flying and tends to be quite apprehensive whenever the topic comes up. We were driving by the airport, on our way to view the sunset at Haleakala and talking turbulence, how Cactoose hates it and and how it’s not something to be too concerned about. All of a sudden, a WestJet plane flies over us on approach to land. It’s especially windy and the plane looks to be violently banking trying to remain level to land. Even I have to admit that it looked like a pretty rough landing. After talking about it for a little bit, we realize that its actually Gimpy and Legend’s plane to Maui! We start sending them messages to ask about the landing. Eventually Gimpy comes online and despite being a very seasoned traveller, remarks its probably one of the roughest landings she’s been in. Sufficed to say this didn’t help Cactoose with her fear of flying.

Did I pack appropriately?

Yes, I think so. For the most part summer and beach wear dominated most days. I only brought one pair of swimming trunks because I didn’t intend to do much water activity past surfing. If I did, I might have wanted to bring another pair in case I needed to alternate them over the course of our trip. The one other item I would think to bring is maybe something for the sporadic rain showers that tend to happen each afternoon in Maui. I don’t think a jacket helps much because its still quite warm, maybe an umbrella? Otherwise you tend to dry up quite quickly once it’s over!

Regrets?

I regret that we didn’t get to the top of Haleakala for the sunset. At the time, the decision to turn around seemed sensible. It was cloudy, we still had a ways to go and we weren’t even sure if the view would be “worth it”. But, I guess the downside is that, now, I don’t know and I have nothing to really say about it. I can’t make a determination one way or the other about its value as an activity and destination. So I guess the regret is that I should have pushed for us to go “anyways”, even if it would have been a poor experience. I think sometimes I lose sight that even a poor experience is an experience.

Advice for people considering similar trips/destinations?

I think most people who go to Maui, tend to know what they are going for. If and when I go to Maui next time, I will certainly be more focused on finding a more “chill” type of accommodation and be more prepared to relax. Personally, I find it hard to switch into that thinking and I suspect that’s probably why most actually go to Maui. So this is likely more advice for myself that sometimes its good to switch off and not always be “looking for something to do”.

Final thoughts?

I think this trip marks the “return to travel” for me. While I have done trips during the pandemic, this trip felt like the first “normal” trip with minimal restrictions in place. Aside from masks being required in the airport and planes, almost all COVID related restrictions are lifted in Maui. It’s the first time in a long time that masks and things like social distancing weren’t really enforced anywhere on the island. While we still did take some precautions based on our comfort level, it felt good to see a return to normalcy in most places. I think as mentioned earlier, it also just felt good to be around friends and enjoy their company for an extended period of time.

It’s been a long two years away from this sort of travel and I’m really happy to see the world trending in a positive way! I find it very encouraging to see that life can and is returning to normal, and that the travel industry can recover. In fact as of this writing, there is a rush to travel across the world, with most countries lifting a lot of their restrictions. So with this in mind, the hope is that we can get back to our “regularly scheduled programming” and that desire and passion to explore can return!

As always, I am thankful to have the health, resources and time to travel. I’m also thankful to have friends who are willing to go to places, share food and spend time with me! I’d like to think this is a really good exclamation mark on perhaps the potential end of the pandemic and return to normalcy!