Maui No Ka Oi: Maui is the Best

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of going to school on Maui. Well not school exactly: I attended a four day optometric conference. I figured it was a good way to get mentally prepared for work again, after so much time away from the office.

Normally fourteen hours in a classroom would really get me down. But fortunately this conference was unique: I sat through classes with a good friend, and after 12 noon we had the rest of each day free.

What could have been four days of pure drudgery turned into a wonderful vacation, on one of the prettiest islands in the world.


Maui has so much to offer, that you can only start to make a dent in three days. But that didn't stop me from trying to pack in as much as possible in the short time I had.

Friday after class, I drove the long winding road up Haleakala (Hah-lay-ah-kah-LAH), East Maui's famous volcano. Though I opted out of the popular dawn tours, I did get some fantastic mid-day views from the highest point on the island. Amazing!

Later that day, after winding my way back down from Haleakala's summit, I joined my friend Tammy and her family at Mama's Fish House in the artsy north Maui town of Paia. We feasted on delicious local fish, relaxed in the open air environment and witnessed a classic Maui sunset.


The next day was one of the best snorkeling trips I've had yet in Hawaii.
Honolua Bay is a well-kept secret just up the road from our busy hotels in Ka'anapali. The conditions were perfect in the protected bay, the coral was beautiful and we saw a ton of fish. This was by far the most sea life I've seen all in one place. Incredibly, we saw many of these very same fish highlighted at the aquarium the next day.

On Sunday we burst out of class like kids getting let out for summer vacation. But none of us was quite ready to head back to Oahu yet.

Our final stop was the Maui Ocean Center, a wonderful aquarium in central Maui featuring native Hawaiian sea life. It's conveniently located just a few miles from the main Maui airport.

It was fun seeing the fish from the other side of the glass:


This guy hung around until I took his picture:


A flounder shows off his very strange shape:


Our time on Maui flew by, and before I knew it it was time to head home. But I had learned firsthand why the locals here say, without seeming to boast, "Maui is the best."