Jacob told me my readership is down so I thought a click-bait headline might help generate traffic. We’ll see if it works!

First, let’s recap our New Year’s Eve adventure! Oh boy!

Remember I left you yesterday on that cliffhanger about possibly getting pizza? Well, guess what! We did! And we even had it delivered to our hotel. That was really exciting. We ordered delivery via GrubHub from Pieology. It hit the spot and gave us that boost of energy we needed to attempt to make it to midnight.

Everything I had read suggested that we needed to get to the beach early to save a spot so we headed out the door about 8:40 p.m. to get there. We decided to watch the fireworks from Fort DeRussy Beach Park hoping it would be a little less packed than Waikiki Beach, and we were right. We easily found a nice big stretch of beach to toss down our beach towels and settle in for the next few hours. I was eager to reach my reading goal for the year (100 books) and only had an hour left on my current read “We are Legion: We are Bob” (a sci-fi). I finished the book up at 10:30 p.m. clicked read AND….. Kindle has me saved as pacific standard time so instead of hitting my 100 book goal, I am now at 1 book read for the year. Oh well, I tried.

Jacob lounged in the sand and discovered that he could create a sand pillow to rest his head on. On the beach there were lots of families, a performance with fire dancers and we could hear the live music from a hotel nearby. The time passed by quickly and before we knew it our many hour wait for 10 minutes of fireworks was finally here.

The show wasn’t the most amazing fireworks display I’ve ever seen (Sydney takes the cake there) but it was still impressive and a great experience to be along the beach surrounded by people cheering happy new year.

We got back to our hotel around 12:45 a.m. and promptly went to sleep so we could be up at 6 a.m. for our flight to Maui.

I realized that what this blog is missing is all the witty zingers from Jacob so I’ll ask him to recap our day for you, readers! He says…

“We flew on an airplane. We saw turtles. We saw a whale and now we are tired.”

Ok – so that… wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Anyway…

Our commute to the airport and flight to Maui were smooth. It took only about 30 minutes to fly from Honolulu to the Maui airport and I didn’t even hear too much coughing on the plane.

Two things impressed me about the airport. 1. It is an open air building and 2. Very clear and helpful signage! (Thank you Maui!)

I enjoyed sitting on a bench inside the airport with the fresh air and sunshine on my shoulders. Amazing! I believe Jacob once famously said (when we visited Australia) that “when we travel places like this it reminds me of how terrible our weather is.” Yes, indeed.

We booked a rental car for our time in Maui which will help us explore more of the island with more freedom. From the airport we drove up to Paia, parked in the public lot and walked around for a bit. We stopped at Lower Paia Beach to sit on a log and soak in the glorious sunshine, sandy beach, turquoise water and crashing waves. I am still in awe of this beautiful place and can completely understand now why this is a destination for so many people. (also look – no people!) I forgot to mention when we parked our car, we saw a cat in the parking lot. Jacob announced this was a sign of good luck for our journey. We’ll see!

While soaking up the sunshine I decided to do a little Googling about when the best time was to see the turtles at Ho‘okipa Beach. Several people who knew my quest to find turtles recommended this a location and I was eager to go. Looking at the clock, it was just about 11:30 a.m. so we decided to head that way. (I may have suggested we head to Paia after picking up the rental car with this particular destination in mind!)

When we arrived to Ho’okipa Beach we were able to find parking right away in the upper lot and looked down to the beach to see if any turtle friends were sunbathing. When we first arrived we didn’t see any and then within minutes they started appearing, slowly crawling from the water and onto the beach. It was magical!

We decided to trek down to the lower beach to get a better look. I was honestly surprised this beach was not more crowded. Watching the turtles swim in and then slowly work there way up the beach was an experience I will never forget. I could have stayed there for hours watching them just sunbathe! By the time we finally packed up and left there were 12 turtles on the beach.

A big thank you, thank you to everyone who recommended this beach! Once we saw the turtles, Jacob said “We saw the turtles, we can go home now.”

Earlier I put a plea on Facebook for recommendations for places to eat in Maui and my wonderful faithful readers you did not disappoint! After checking out the turtles, we got back in the rental car and headed for Kihei, which I have learned is pronounced (Key-Hey).

We drove straight to Kihei Caffe and got our order in before they closed at 2 p.m. Jacob enjoyed fish and chips and I got fish tacos. We visited with the locals during our meal (chickens and pigeons).

After lunch we wandered around Kalama Park until we got close to check in time. (I am currently extremely distracted writing this because someone in a condo across from us is heavily invested in the Mississippi v. Georgia football game and are shouting every time Mississippi scores. Jacob is finding this extremely entertaining and I suggested we should start rooting loudly for the other team. He vetoed that idea).

We are checked into our AirBnB and enjoying the fantastic views of the ocean. Earlier we saw what we think were whales surfacing in the distance. We know this is migration time for them and I was really hopeful we’d see some!

We are discussing our plans for tomorrow, and doing our best to remember that we are on vacation and should be relaxing and not walking 10 miles everyday.

Until then!