Day 11 - Last Day

Last day in Hawaii, and only a half day at that. Our flight out of Maui was for 8:30PM so we had some time to do stuff in the morning, but then we had to pack and get ready to go.

We decided to try a new beach that was supposed to have tons of sea turtles in the morning, Maluaka Beach. We got there and the waves were the highest that we had seen them and there wasn’t really a good place to enter the water. We got out there (partially because we thought that we saw turtles playing…. Stupid rocks) and were kind of disappointed. I don’t know if we didn’t go far enough left or far enough out, but we didn’t see much of anything.

We decided that we couldn’t end our trip with that disappointing snorkeling, so we headed back to our old stand by of Black Sand beach. We got in from the shore this time which was kind of difficult due to the higher waves. We hadn’t really wanted to climb over the rocks to the private beach, but I think it would have been just about as easy. We again saw plenty of fish and corral.
As we were getting ready to head back to shore, Shawnna was adjusting her mask above water and I was exploring a little further from shore. When I came back towards her, there was a huge sea turtle swimming right by Shawnna. Shawnna was just barely able to see him as he swam away.

Then, as we were heading back to shore, we found another turtle snoozing under a rock. We waited him out and he finally came to the surface and then swam right between us. We got some great pictures and a perfect end to the snorkeling. Dan really wanted to go in, but I convinced him to be patient. And out patience paid off. He came so close to me that I had to move to keep him from touching me. It was such an amazing moment for me. We spent a little time back at Po’olenalena and got to catch some waves on the boogie board. Shawnna even caught a couple. Then, unfortunately, it was time to go back and pack. This beach was by far my favorite beach to hang out and swim in the ocean. The sand was so light and beautiful. The water was crystal clear with no rocks or anything to step on. I really didn't think I wanted to boogie board. But Dan made it look like so much fun!! Honestly, the first time it happened was by accident. : ) We were out in the water, I was lounging on the board and Dan said "there's a big one coming, hang on" He wasn't kidding!! It took me all the way to the beach!! And it was so much fun!!!

We got packed, ate lunch at Pupu grill – excellent fish and chips. Spearfish (hebi) was excellent. This meal completely made up for last night. I wanted to stop buy LuLu's to get another haupia (coconut) shake, but I forgot : ( We got our water camera’s developed at Costco so we wouldn’t have to carry them home ( cheap at only $4.00 per roll) stopped at K-Mart to buy some souvenirs and then got to the airport.

We really didn’t have much luck with flights on this trip, and it continued on the way home. We checked our bags all the way through to Milwaukee from Maui, this was nice, we thought we were going to have to pick them up in Honolulu and check them again. But the ticket agent said that they couldn’t print our boarding passes for Portland to Chicago, which we didn’t really think too much of.

Maui to Honolulu to Portland, no problem. Got off the plane after flying all night and found out that our flight to Chicago had been cancelled. We go all the way to the United check-in area, wait for like 35 minutes and are told that we have been rebooked for a flight at 1:00PM (current time 7:30AM) to get into Milwaukee at 10:30PM. We had noticed a Northwest flight leaving at 8:30AM to Milwaukee and asked about that. We were told they had seats available, but that they could only give us a voucher. So we went to Northwest, got boarding passes, but no seat assignments, we had to go to the gate to get those. By this time, it was almost 8:10 and we needed to get to the gate. Got to Security, surprise surprise, special security. Everything taken out of our bags, air puff machine, swiped all electronics with special cloth etc. As we are finally heading to the gate we see that they are almost done boarding. We do manage to get two (last two?) seats, begged the gate attendant to let us grab two muffins since we hadn’t eaten in like 18 hours and board the plane seconds after the last call announcement.

Turns out that our Portland to Milwaukee flight actually stops in Minneapolis (airport number 7 for the trip) and then on to Milwaukee where we arrive only 15 minutes after we were scheduled to arrive from Chicago. And with that the vacation is officially over.