Maui Day One

Annette and I had a week in Maui recently, our second time to Hawaii but the first was so long ago that we were just kids it seems.
With both our work lives hectic and demanding with projects tasking our brains we knew we had to take a break and what better place to recharge the body then some where in the sun.

All of Day One's pictures can be seen on my Flickr web site here

So a trip to the travel agent had three choices in our hands in a couple of days, and a week or so later we were on a plane to Maui.

The first day was a day to just chill as we had one of those late night flights that had us getting to our hotel at 3.00 AM our time, so we were pretty beat the next morning.
We awoke to the view you see in the picture above - not a bad view to wake up to at all.

 We toured the local town of Lahaina which was a whaling town and before that was one of the Hawaiian King's residences.

In the central courtyard at the Old Courthouse is a banyan tree that has been nurtured and helped to grow to provide shade from the tropical sun for the local residents. 134 years of growing has created one of the largest banyan trees in the world.

Many celebrities have made a home or started a business on Maui: above is a sign for Mick Fleetwood's restaurant (of Fleetwood Mac fame). Among other names we would here were Woody Harrelson, Oprah Winfrey, and Weird Al Yankovic

By late afternoon we were back in our hotel room with the necessities of a a tropical holiday laid out on our balcony table. A cold beer, a glass of wine, some brie and bread to spread it on.
A little downtime to rest up and then we were off to tour the north side of the island.

As we were already close to the north end of the island we did not have to go far before the climate changed and we went from the dry west side to the wet north side and the tropical jungle began to appear.

The winding topography created sheltered lagoons that only the locals seemed to know about. Large houses take up prime real estate for the fantastic views, have to say I'm kinda jealous.

The sun begins to set around 6.00 PM and by 6.30 it's already dark. Not like home where you can track the sun for the last couple hours of the day. In Maui it's like 20 minutes and then it's dark.

Our hotel room faced west so every night we had great views of the sunset. By the time you got seated on the balcony with a glass of wine and a book to read, the sun was already beginning to dip into the ocean.

Just like watching the sand run out of the hourglass, you can watch the sun hide it's bright face behind the ocean. The quickness of the approaching night makes watching the sun set a spectator sport.

The last rays of sunshine creep over the horizon to light up the distant sky but the light is already too far away to highlight the clouds. Every minute the light changes enough to have a true photographer's heart all aflutter.
No more sight seeing for this day, what should we do now to end the day honey?