Day 10: We saw whales!!
It was another early start to our day; we had a date with a doughnut, on a stick. Going to Komoda bakery is always one of my Maui highlights. I never eat doughnuts, but I make an exception for the doughnuts on a stick and the guava malasadas. The bakery is part of a general store, but once the bakery is sold out, they close the entire store. Komoda is located more in central Maui, in the small town of Makawao. Our tradition is to get our doughnuts from Komoda and then go to Ho’okipa Beach Park and watch the waves and the surfers. Every year we’ve visited this park there has been a competition going on, the first time it was surfing competition, the second time was a wind surfing competition. Unfortunately there wasn’t a competition happening this time so there were only a handful of surfers out, but the waves were HUGE. We stayed at Ho’okipa Beach for a couple hours, the waves were mesmerizing and the sea breeze was very refreshing.
After we finished our relaxing time at Ho’okipa we headed to Iao Valley to view the Iao Needle and do some light hiking. We’ve never been there before so we were excited to try something new. The Iao Valley State Monument was breathtaking. The valley that you’re in is so vast and lush; it makes you feel very small. It reminded us of the Hana highway, but a lot easier to get to the end destination (the Hana highway is about 65 miles, where the Iao valley road is only about 2 miles). We hiked one of the trails along the water for about a half mile, we got turned around at one point and hand to follow the water back to find our way out. At the start of the trail they had a garden section that included the plants of Iao: Kalo (Taro), Ko (sugar cane) and Mai’a (banana). As you continue along the path there is a viewpoint to see the needle – there was a sign that said 133 more stairs and you’re at the view point. I counted, it was actually 145 stairs.
After our adventures in the Iao Valley we headed to the Kahului harbor for lunch. We watched the boats and the surfers while we enjoyed our sandwiches, then headed back to Kihei to hit the beach. We went to Keawakapu Beach to enjoy some swimming, reading and the sunset. We got to the beach around 3pm and sunset wasn’t until 5:44pm so we had plenty of time to unwind and relax before we lost the daylight. As sunset was happening we thought we saw a spout of water, so we kept staring in that general direction and then out of nowhere TWO whales breached!! We were totally shocked! One whale was dramatically smaller than the other, so we believe it was a mom and her calf. Then we saw more spouts of water and more whales breaching, we believe there may have even been two calves. It continued for the rest of sunset until they got too far away and the sunlight went to dim. It was such an AMAZING sight, we were stunned. It was the perfect ending to an great day.
Stay tuned for the next entry, we saw spinner dolphins!
