Disappointing Maui in 2017

Maui's head is upper left - crossed arms above the Haleakala Visitor Center

2 November 2017

On a Princess cruise, the port for Maui is a tender port (Lahaina) There is a dock for cruise ships on Maui, but it is a NCL (Norwegian Cruise Line) dock.

NCL Dock area

This is another instance where the NCL port is superior to the one for Princess. Maui is even worse than Honolulu. There, NCL docks next to the Aloha Tower

and Princess is at Pier 2.

Because the cruise line gives priority to people who are on their excursions. I knew that I would not have any luck getting a tender ticket for an early non-Princess tour. I could not do the Expedia tour for the Road to Hana, for instance. If I wanted to get off the ship, I had to take a Princess tour and there was only one tour I could take with a scooter. Even then, the Excursion desk made me come to see them so they could decide whether I would be allowed to take the excursion. That was even after I filled out their questionnaire. Although it was not publicized, their rule for whether a person could use a tender was that if the person was able to step onto the tender under their own power, they could go ashore.

Tour ticket

Polly's snorkeling tour was very early, so I set a wake-up call and asked for Room Service.

The wakeup call came about 5:55 and Polly was confused about where the phone was. She thought it was on the table between us but it is not. It is all the way on the other side of the room and not near either bed. Then my alarm clock went off. I used the bathroom and then Polly went in and while she was in there, Siri chimed in - I was able to turn Siri off. We were both dressed when Room Service arrived at 6:30 (the earliest we could get it) We ate and then went down to the Crowne Grille on deck 6 to check in and get our tender tickets. They sent Polly into the theatre, but of course from this deck there are steps.

I was group #17, she was #11. I sat in the Crowne Grille and waited my turn.

They sent all us crippled people down in an elevator to deck 4 and then there was another little elevator down to deck 3. The tender was bouncing around quite a bit, but I managed to get on and they loaded the scooter last. When I got to shore I took a photo of the lighthouse that was there.

lighthouse

I was to have a walking tour of town. I found the guide.

waterfront

The guide wanted to show us the history and culture of the area, and he did that very well

Waterfront

It was quite hot in the sun so the tour basically went from shade to shade. So first he took us up on the veranda in front of a hotel or restaurant.

We looked at the cannon which were on either side of a vertical concrete structure - apparently there was a wooden flagpole in the middle of this, but the old Lahaina Town flagpole fell down in 2013 on a wet and windy day due to rot and termite damage. The new flagpole will be a 50-foot aluminum pole with internal halyards and a white powder coating.

Structure which was on each side of the old flagpole

cannon

Sign about the cannon

He explained about how the royal family when they lived here farmed their own food.

map of Lahaina Historic Trail Sites

Waterfront tables

We went to the shade of a Banyan tree

A Banyan tree for shade

No Climb, No Swing Banyan Tree

We saw the

Lahaina Court and Custom House

Old Jail Gallery

The sidewalks were rough and when the front wheels of the scooter are wrenched to the side, if I hold onto the handles the wheels are going to be twisted sideways and the controls are pointing forward. And I have to reset. When we got to this point in the tour, I tried the grass, but it was too soft and I had to get off and move the scooter to harder ground without me being on it.

waterfront

We saw the library

And the

Master's Reading Room

Then he took us to a place where you could get sandwiches, and also order Hawaiian food (such as pineapple and macadamia nuts) to be sent home.

Sandwiches - Smoothies

I stayed on the porch as it was a small place. There was a parrot in a cage outside on the porch

African Grey Parrot

After that he explained about the breadfruit tree which apparently no longer has seeds but has to reproduce by air layering the roots.

I took a photo of a bird on the sidewalk while he was talking. Then he took us down the back streets so we could see how the ordinary people in Lahaina lived

Lahaina Shingon Mission

Lahaina Shingon Mission-Buddhist

Residential area

Yellow hydrant

Blackie's Boat Yard

Surfboards

Prison Street Pizza

tree branches

historic fort wall on the right

Tree leaves

It was a good tour and very informative and I was mostly able to stay on the sidewalk or at least a paved surface. . I talked to the guide afterward and he knew about FindAGrave and insisted on walking me to one of the cemeteries.

Bell in the churchyard

But it was pretty hot - I tried to deploy my folding umbrella and when I couldn't the guide did it for me. So I had some shade. It is, however, impossible to drive the scooter, hold the umbrella and also take photos. The cemeteries were all grass so I would have had to walk to take photos. My back was starting to hurt and the scooter was getting down toward the middle color (light green).

So I went back to Front Street where I had intended to maybe shop and also to wait for Polly to get back from snorkeling which was to be about 1:30. And I thought we might shop and have lunch. But I was too tired to shop and I didn't even want to use the bathrooms.

I lay down on a bench for a bit,

Looking up from the bench

and also talked to a man who was there (who put the umbrella back together for me). I called Bob, and then sent a message to Polly and she said that the guys on the boat said they would not be back until 3. I couldn't wait that long, so I just came back to the ship, and I've been watching Thursday night football which is in the afternoon in Hawaii

I gave Polly my snorkeling camera, but I had taken the battery out of it for storage, and had not put it back in. So she was unable to take photos. But I think she had a good time snorkeling.

For dinner Nov 2nd, I had the shrimp bisque which was advertised as "with sweet potatoes" which I am not always fond of, but it was good. Then I had the pulled pork with bok choy and rice with the frozen banana parfait (which turned out to be something like an ice cream cake) for dessert.

Shredded Kaui pig

Semi-frozen banana-toffee parfait

After dinner Polly went to the show which she said was good. I took a turn out on the promenade deck - it was nice out there.

Promenade deck

Atrium from the promenade deck

Looking in the window at the bar

After that I just went back to the cabin and set all the clocks ahead one hour (alarm clock, computer, cell phone and camera). Then I fell asleep. Polly said when she came in she shook out the duvet with a quilt inside and found out that the quilt inside had blood on it so she gave it back to the room steward to get cleaned.

2010 on Pride of America

In 2010, I visited Maui on NCL. We were there for two days and did two great excursions.

June 20, 2010-Tour to Haleakala

Tour ticket

[i]My grandson said he had been waking up at 5:30 so I did not set a wake-up call and of course we didn't wake up until 6:30. We threw on our clothes and went up to the buffet to eat. I had bacon and a bagel and cranberry juice. I also stuck a roll in my pocket.

He could not find his passport (he needs a photo ID to get back to the ship), so he gave me his backpack and I found it. Then I told him to put the backpack away and when he did this he stood up suddenly and whacked his head a very good one on the folded back upper bunk.

Grandson's bunk with folded top bunk bed

I did not know whether I should take him to the doctor or not, but decided not to. Our tour today was the volcano. I walked out to the gate on shore but he was caught by the photographer bird.

They put me and another lady aside to sit up front on the bus, which was good.

My grandson (with a headache from coming up under the bunk bed) sat in the back by a window. But the bus driver made him come and sit by me which annoyed him VERY much. He was having trouble taking photos from that seat.

Road to Haleakala

We saw one of the vans of the biking people - they go up to the top and just coast all the way down. The bike ride begins at 6500’ elevation of Mount Haleakala, OUTSIDE the park, where you will descend the 21 switchbacks on the western slopes with only 200 yards of pedaling. I didn't pick that as a tour because it was a long time since I rode a bike and my grandson only learned to ride a bike recently. On the way up to the Haleakala Crater, we stopped to give people a chance to get a cup of coffee

Sunrise Country Market

Wisteria

Flowers at stop

and to to snap a photo of

Sculpture in Tom Cruise's garden

We drove up to the top of the crater and it was an extremely windy road.

Winding road

A really big curve

motorcycle

road into the cloud

View from the top

Model with road up to the park on the side

I think it made my grandson feel sort of queasy plus he already had a headache, and I think he had a problem with the altitude also. My sister had me spooked about altitude sickness, but that was not a problem for me at all. Even though my ticket said "No respiratory or heart problems"

Visitors Center

The crater was amazing, It looks like the surface of the moon

Crater

Stay on the trail

Observatory

Trail ride horses at the top

Model

Endangered species habitat sign

House of the Sun certificate

Haleakala stamp

and there were two visitor's centers for me to get stamps in my passport book (which I had brought), and my grandson bought a passport book

too and got stamps in it. The lower visitor's center had bathrooms.

Men's room

The upper one (11 miles up the road) had less comfortable bathrooms.

There was a ranger explaining the various kinds of lava, with examples to show.

We didn't see anything but a stuffed Nene,

Stuffed nene

Extinction is Forever

but we did see the endangered silversword

Silversword

Silversword

My grandson bought his little sister a

Stuffed `I`iwi Bird

On the way down we stopped for a snack at a roadside stand,

Rest stop

and we saw horse farms and the sugar cane factory.

Sugar cane factory

We got back to the ship about 1300.

When you get back on the ship, first a guard comes and has to see a photo ID and the ship card of everyone on the bus (my grandson has been carrying the copy of his passport photo instead of the passport, and I have been using my driver's license), and then you have to go through a full security scan like at the airport, except you don't have to take off your shoes. I forgot that I had my cell phone the first time and had to be wanded. After we got on board again, we had lunch in the buffet as the dining room is never open for lunch.

My grandson went up and participated in a soccer tournament and got the second place trophy which was a sports drink cooler/bottle. (Orange).

Orange drink bottle

I went to Trivia and won a deck of cards. I ate in the dining room and had cheese cauliflower soup, beef stroganoff

and Dark Chocolate Orange Bavarian Cream.

The cabin steward gets to our room quite late - I have to stay dressed longer than I would like. When he got to our room he made a cobra out of the bedspread (which is just kind of a scarf thing across the bed and not a full bedspread).

Bedspread cobra

I asked him what the round thing in the bathroom was and apparently it is where you put a sharps container if you need one.

bathroom waste basket

The other thing that happened to my grandson this evening was that he missed a step and fell and smashed his camera screen (it still works - you just can't see the pictures until you download them). It is fortunate that I took all my cameras with me as he can now go back to using the one that he had in Yellowstone

21 June 2010

Again we had breakfast in the buffet and got to the tour early and were allowed to board and sit in the front.

lining up for tours (from the bus)

This time I picked to sit on the right where there is a better view. We had the same bus driver as yesterday, but my grandson was much happier today. The tour is the Best of Maui and it is a fairly long tour.

First we stopped at a state park where there were buildings in the style of the seven nationalities that make up Hawaii - Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican (I think), Polynesian and US.

Portuguese oven

Japanese tea house

He did the whole circuit of the park and I just took in the area around the bus and used the bathroom.

handicapped bathroom toilet

Then we went up to another state park (Iao Valley) where there was a volcano tube core like a needle,

Lava tube with the outside eroded off

dry waterfall

and a stream and some waterfalls. There was also an area that recreated the original Hawaiian farms.

Hawaiian interpreter

school group singing a song

My grandson again did all the trails and I just walked up to the bridge and back

Our next visit was to a Maui Tropical Plantation -

a working plantation where we had a little trolley ride (our trolley time was 10:40) to see how various things grew. But first I bought some things and had them shipped.

Coffee

Taro

Ti

and had a coconut husking demonstration which intrigued my grandson.

coconut husking area

Jade flower

After the trolley ride they gave us lunch. This consisted of a cup of pineapple (I ate my grandson's as he does not like fruit or sweet things in general), a fried shrimp (I gave mine to my grandson), Hawaiian chicken, and rice.

There was banana cake and coffee at the end. I got the cake and he ate the cake part (he said he had never had banana cake before) and I ate the icing on his which he didn't want

Our last stop was the Maui Ocean Center, and this was a marvelous aquarium with just Hawaiian fish. I got a wheelchair - my grandson doesn't have enough mass to push me in a wheelchair up an incline, but the wheelchair had wheels that I could push too.

We got some really good photos. We left there about 2:30

After we got back on the ship, my grandson went up to the sports deck and I went down to the cabin to take a shower. I was trying to figure out how to work the shower. I did not see that the temperature control was on the side, and I was only turning the water pressure knob, when the hand held shower head came off the stand and sprayed all around - which since I was standing half out of the shower and had the bathroom door open also, that meant that the bathroom mirror and the closet doors also got some spray. Anyway I had a nice shower when I finally got the temperature turned down.

I edited and posted some of our photos for the Ocean Center. My grandson went to the Second City show which he LOVED, and he came back and recounted the complete show for me - he was wired.

The towel animal tonight was an elephant which he also liked