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My wife and I spent the last week on 
vacation in Maui. If you're ever 
planning a trip to Maui, here are my 
observations and tips:

We rented a condo through AirBnB at the 
Kamaole Sands Condo complex in Kihei. 
Almost every unit in the condo facility 
appears to be available as a short-term 
rental, and it might as well be a hotel. 
The condo had a kitchen and laundry 
machines, and all the supplies we 
needed: pots, dishes, cutlery, beach 
chairs, boogie boards, and lots of 
towels. There were also nine barbecues 
near the pool. Food is very expensive in 
Maui, so it's worth doing a little 
careful shopping at the outset. There is 
a Costco near the airport and a Target 
on Hookele St. on the way into Kihei. 
There are also several local grocery 
stores in Kihei. Electricity is also 
quite expensive in Maui, so the wall 
sockets for the air conditioners were on 
timers (maximum one hour)!

Bring a phone with offline maps or a 
dedicated GPS unit. The rental vehicles 
do not come with GPS as a standard 
feature, and adding a GPS to your rental 
is about USD$80. I had intended to use 
my phone as a GPS, but it broke -- dead 
to the world -- the day we were leaving. 
In the end, it was the best thing that 
could have happened. I spent the entire 
8-day trip without an internet 
connection. I did real-life things, 
talked to people, and read books. How 
about that?

On to the attractions...

BEACHES

If you like the beach, Kihei is the 
place to be. There are several beaches 
along South Kihei Road, near the condo 
we rented, but we preferred a couple of 
beaches to the South.

Po'olenalena beach has nice waves for 
body surfing. We had three kids with us 
(two nieces and a nephew, between 12 and 
16 years old) and the waves were good, 
but not dangerous. Most of the beaches 
along South Kihei Road have warning 
signs that the shore break can result in 
serious injuries. Po'olenalena does not 
have a shore break. On the negative 
side, there are no changerooms and the 
sand is like silica. The grains are 
tiny, they get into absolutely 
everything, and they are very hard to 
get off!

Mokapu beach has changerooms and 
washrooms and the water is very calm. 
The kids snorkeled around and it was 
easy to get them cleaned up before 
getting back in the rental van. A real 
plus.

HIKES

We went on two hikes on Maui. I 
recommend both.

On our second day, we drove to Hana. 
It's a 2.5 hour drive and it's worth 
getting an early start to avoid the 
traffic. The road is very narrow. There 
are numerous one-lane bridges and 
one-lane sections of the road, where you 
must yield to oncoming traffic. Be ready 
to slow down and to eke past (or 
potentially back up for) people who 
ignore the yield signs. 

Drive all the way to Hana. I was advised 
to avoid stopping for the attractions 
along the way -- and it was great 
advice. We visited them on the way back, 
which meant that we stopped everywhere 
on a schedule opposed to that of all the 
other tourists. Most of the places were 
vacant by the time we got to them. On 
another note, the traffic headed for 
Hana in the early afternoon looked 
absolutely nightmarish.

Just past Hana, there is an interesting 
hike to the 400-foot Waimoku waterfall 
in Haleakala national park. The hike 
takes a couple of hours and you pass 
through a dense bamboo forest on the 
way. If the wind is blowing, the bamboo 
makes cracking sounds and knocks 
together. It's quite a racket!

On the way back, there are beaches and 
little towns to visit. 

The other hike we did was in Haleakala 
crater -- a dormant volcanic crater. 
Your three-day park pass from Haleakala 
national park works at the crater as 
well, so if you take these trips within 
a couple of days, you can re-use the 
pass.

The drive to the Haleakala crater 
involves a massive climb from sea level 
to 10,000 feet. The road is full of 
switchbacks, but well-paved and the 
drive is easy compared to the trip to 
Hana. For the bicyclists among you, 
people were riding down from the top. 
Crazy people were riding up!

You can do a day-hike into the crater 
(which is what we did) or you can hike 
and camp. The near side of the crater is 
like a moonscape, but the far side has a 
lot of vegetation, and a camping trip 
looks like it would be a lot of fun. The 
air is thin and you definitely notice it 
on the hike up out of the crater.

Other than that, we went out for dinner 
at a Mexican place on South Kihei called 
Fred's Mexican Cafe and it was quite 
good.

Oh, one more thing. It seems like many 
of the flights out of Maui leave at 
night. There were about 10 flights 
leaving between 8-10 p.m. on the night 
we left. So you'll either have to book 
an extra day at your hotel/condo or plan 
something to do between checkout time 
and the flight. Because there were so 
many flights at once, all of the lines 
at the airport were quite long....

I had a friend checking my house every 
few days while I was gone, but arrived 
home to find that the water supply line 
for the dishwasher was leaking -- a 
constant drip -- and had been for 
several days by the look of things. It 
was just a worn out washer, but I'm 
still drying out the floorboards beneath 
it with a fan. It was lucky that we 
weren't gone for longer!