What's in Maui?

[Delphinus]

It was Chin who brought back some Achilles tangs from Hawaii. Think he's there now actually, so hopefully next time he's online he can chime in with his own perspectives. As far as I recall, every one of the Achilles tangs he brought back eventually perished. To me there are so many better ways to bring back memories of a vacation than self-caught livestock. It's one thing to go there with the specific intention of collection, in which case you have all your permitation lined up beforehand, and it's another thing to have a vacation and "oh I'll just bring back something as well." It's not THAT hard to buy livestock locally up here. I don't know, guess it's up to everyone to form their own conclusions on this, all I can say is do your homework to avoid heartache.

I'll see if I can find the URL for Chin's thread about the Achilles tangs. There might be info there about doing your own importing.

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A pond full of yellow tangs eh? Ok that may indeed be neat. I don't golf so totally didn't enter my mind to suggest golfing. The yellow tangs I saw whilst snorkeling made me plum happy not to think about golfing anyhow.

And actually personally I almost sort of agree with Amante about the drive to Hana. You can get the same feel by driving from Victoria to Port Renfrew. It's just that there are more palm trees in the Maui rainforest. Nevertheless you should probably do it just to form your own opinion. Plus there are neat things to see along the way, like Black Sand Beach. When my wife was there last year though there was construction and a lot of tandem gravel trucks on that highway. I hope there aren't any tnadem gravel truck drivers on the board because they are not going to like what I have to say next. I think gravel truck drivers tend to have the highest thug population of any kind of professional drivers out there. They don't respect the usual right of way rules, they use the "I'm bigger thus I have the right of way" mentality. There are lot of blind corners and single lane bridges. All they do is blare their horn before rounding a corner and it's up the cars to get out of the way. What happened to my wife was she was halfway across the single lane bridge, this truck came around the corner and came straight at her. He didn't stop and wasn't going to and he didn't care if he killed anyone in the process. She had to screech to a halt, pop her in reverse and drive backwards like a bat out hell to avoid being hit head-on by this truck. She ended up driving the rental car into the cliff to get out of his way. He just kept going. There was a police report filed, the Maui police said they would look into this, but you know there's no way to track down who this driver was.

So just be careful on them roads. Maui is very much a "small town" sort of county and the roads in places are not maintained to the level that you'd expect in any other major U.S. destination. The main roads are OK, but the secondary roads can indeed put a little mayhem into your life.

Plus, unless you fly into Hana, you pretty much have to take the Hana highway to see the 7 sacred pools. I don't know, I have yet to see these pools so I don't know if they alone are worth going to Hana. I found there wasn't a whole lot to do in Hana. We drove up there for the day, looked around a bit, visited an orchid grower, sat on the black sand beach ... then pretty much drove back to Kihei. There was the entire day.