Hawaii Islands (Maui)

In my last post I was writing about our trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. After that awesome experience the next year in August (in 2010) we decided to go to an other Hawaiian Island, Maui.

If I told you I really liked the Big Island I have to tell you I loved Maui even better. Why? It was as gorgeous as a beautiful place in a fairy tale. You will see in the pictures.

When we traveled to Maui we still just had one kid, Sophie who was almost 2 years old.

Where to stay in Maui?

As I mentioned in an older post we prefer to stay in apartments instead of hotels. Why? Because with small children it is much easier to cook than sit in a nice restaurant quietly. You will also have more space to play. If you have a one or a two bedrooms, your kid(s) can sleep in an other room and you don't have to be quiet after she takes a nap or in the evening when she goes to sleep. Apartments are usually much cheaper when rented for a week or longer. A good place to search for apartments is www.vrbo.com. We found a very nice apartment on the southwest coast of Maui on the border of Kihei and Wailea. We decided which part of the island to stay in based on two factors: weather (sunshine and dry) and closeness to good, kid friendly beaches.

What to do in Maui?

• Go to the beaches as many time as possible.

We found a breathtaking beach close to our place. It was a very small beach with a few people, barely noticeable from the road.  If you like snorkeling you have to come here. A lot of turtles live there so you can swim them as many times as you want. Once I was even followed by a baby turtle! I was swimming after him and when I turned around I was a little bit scared because his parents were following me. In the end nothing happened of course and you don't have to be scared either because they eat algae and not people.

 The sea life is absolutely gorgeous. You can swim with puffer fish, butterfly fish and even with my favorite who's Hawaiian name is humu humu nuku nuku apua'a (trigger fish).

Puffer fish

Butterfly fishes

Humu humu nuku nuku apau'a

The temperature of the ocean was really nice (79-80 degrees Fahrenheit/ 26 Celsius) so even if you stayed in the water a half an hour you weren't cold and the sand was perfect to play for a two year old.

Sophie is playing in the sand

• We visited the Maui Ocean Center which shows the ocean fauna around Maui.

It is very nice to see what kind of animals are living in this area. Even if you don't like snorkeling or diving you can see jelly fish, sea stars, manta rays, sharks and many other kinds of creatures.

• Drive down the Road to Hana along Maui's Eastern coastline.

The  Hana Highway is a 68-mile (109 km) long stretch of Hawaii State Routes 36 and 360 which connects Kahului with the town of Hana in east Maui. It is a beautiful but very narrow road and you have to be careful if you don't like the sharp curves because there are a lot of them. The vegetation is fascinating on that side of the island. Because it face the prevailing Trade Winds it gets a lot of rainfall. Make a few stops along the way to Hana, like at a black sand beach which was new for us.

 Or the at the botanical garden which is full of gorgeous flower and trees.

• Hiked on the Haleakala volcano. 

The travel book suggested to go to the top of the volcano at sunrise but we were too lazy to get up so early (at 4AM, and it would have been hard with our daughter). We choose the sunset time but we were unlucky because the sky wasn't clear enough to see the sun descend into the ocean. Anyway it is worth it to go up so we decided to take a short hike down into the crater of the volcano. It was different than the volcano at the Big Island but very nice.

That holiday was so good I decided to discover a third island of Hawai'i too. I just didn't know when and which one. Now I am starting to get excited because next spring we are going to Kauai.

(2010. August - 6 days)