Whale of a Birthday

Aloha Kakahiaka,




Looking back at what I had written would be my perfect Maui birthday, things didn't work out exactly as we had planned. Not to worry, though, it was still a wonderful day and any birthday here on the islands beats a birthday back home.

We were all excited about the whale watch tour during the morning, as we had seen a few sightings from our lanai as I posted earlier. Going out on the water to get even closer was going to be even more exciting. And it was. The narrator on the tour said that Tuesday was the last official day of whale watching season in Hawaii, yet we still found quite a bit of activity. Much like us and other annual guests, they try to stay as long as they can, too.

The first sighting that we saw on the boat was probably the most thrilling. Not more than 10 minutes in, we found a mother whale swimming with her calf. As the boat engine stopped and we watched for a little bit, the naturist on the boat also spotted a male escort whale nearby as well, which we were told doesn't happen a lot either. I tried snapping a few good photos and will be looking through them and post the best ones.

We moved on with the tour, finding a few more whales here and there, closer to Molokai. It was about a 2 hour tour, though, about 90 minutes in we all started to get a little uneasy with the motion of the boat and had to retreat into the cabin. Cindy and I have taken boat tours in Maui before and only had mild discomfort near the ends of them. But this time it was much worse. Unfortunately, we decided to cancel our other two cruises while we're here, which does free up time to do other things, though.

Even though the end of the whale watch wasn't great for us, it was still an amazing sight to see and a great memory for our trip. We'd absolutely love to do it again, but we just need to figure out a way to beat the motion sickness piece. Since we're planning to come back in February for just that purpose, we've got sometime to research and maybe practice back out on Lake Michigan.

After the whale watch, we stayed in Lahaina a little bit, hit Quizno's and Starbucks for lunch. After sandwiches, we walked over to Hilo Hattie for some serious gift shopping. Cindy and mom pretty much crossed off everyone on their list, and I picked up a kukui nut necklace to go with my aloha shirt for the luau next week. We killed about an hour there before heading back to our room for a little bit.

Cindy crashed for about an hour before we headed out to Whalers for the rest of our evening. The original plan was to eat at Leilani's for my birthday and celebrate it with a giant piece of hula pie. However, the timing didn't work out so well since we ate in Lahaina, so we moved that back to Thursday. I did get to eat my favorite Hawaiian pizza for dinner, though, which was still a nice treat. Cindy and mom also got to stop by the Pearl Factory to pick out their pearls and make their rings. We have to bring them back on Friday to be inspected and then they can start wearing them. Now they have something else to remember this trip by.

Around 6:30pm, we started towards the Hyatt for our Tour of the Stars activity there. When we checked in with the concierge, he mentioned that two of the viewings the night before were canceled because of the clouds, and it started to look like ours was going to be, too. Turns out it did end up being canceled, and we're going to try again next Tuesday.

All in all it was still a magical day, and funny as it sounds, it didn't really feel like my birthday at all. Being here on Maui to celebrate was more than I could have asked for anyway, so if things didn't turn out as planned, it still was perfect.