Wanderung 26

Walkabout, Sailabout

March - May 2012


 

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Tuesday, May 8th, 2012: Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

Bob:

Our last port of call before our cruise ended in San Francisco was Lahaina on the island of Maui. The sea was somewhat rough as the Sea Princess edged toward the island shortly after dawn, but the wind was blowing from the East across the island at us, and that created a "wind shadow" of calm sea for maybe half a mile off the island's coast. Our ship crept forward until we were just inside that wind shadow where the waters were much calmer, and there we anchored and prepared to lower the lifeboats for the tendering operation.

We had no tours scheduled in Lahaina, so our default plan was to take a tender ashore and wander about the town to see anything interesting. The advantage of having a loosey-goosey plan like that was that we were under no time pressures at all and could have a relaxed, leisurely breakfast before gathering our things and proceeding ashore. I rather enjoy tender rides, especially when the sea is rough as it is akin to a free roller-coaster ride, but the lady next to me was obviously suffering sea sickness and I felt quite sorry for her.

Monika:

One of the simple joys of cruising is for me being up on deck early in the morning and watching the ship steaming into another port. Today it was Lahaina on Maui. I watched as we sailed past the lush, green coast in the early morning. We came to rest and dropped anchor outside of the reef that guarded the little port of Lahaina since this was a tender port.

Since we had no excursion planned, we took our time at breakfast and then get ready for one of the ferries. The trip was a little rough but a lot of fun and I always enjoy watching our ship getting smaller.

Bob:

Once ashore we ambled over to the Old Lahaina Courthouse building, a rather distinguished-looking building mostly reminiscent of an English Georgian Mansion but with the columns of a prototypical US ante-bellum plantation manor attached to the front. Perhaps an odd combination, but it worked in this case. An Information Center was indeed located in the Old Courthouse, but the building was closed until 9:00 a.m. and that was too long to wait, so we continued ambling south-southeast along Front Street.

Monika:

Once on land, we walked over to the old courthouse, since they were supposed to have a small museum. But it did not open until 9AM. So on we went to the remains of the old fort. Not much, but at least some ruins.

There also was a plumeria tree, with plumeria flowers all over the ground. So I gathered some and Bob decorated the black band of my hat with them. Now I felt very Hawaiian.


 

Bob:

There we chanced upon an old Anglican missionary church that dated from the 1870s. Such a pretty, pretty church! The walls were comprised of sliding panels that when slid open let in all the sunlight and airy breezes, as well as giving the parishioners nice views outside. That might have made it more difficult for the minister to maintain the attention of the congregation during his sermons, but it also resulted in one of the most airy, spacious, and brightly lit churches I have ever been in.

Besides the stained glass windows that I would expect of an old Anglican church, the church featured painted panels above the doorway, around the pulpit, and just above the altar. They were somewhat in the style of Gaugin's paintings of Tahiti, but the panel above the altar, for example, featured a Polynesian version of the Madonna and child, which is not omething Gaugin would have ever painted, I think. The artist apparently painted the panels in 1940 as a thank-you to the congregation for the hospitality afforded him while he was in the islands.

We continued on to a small park that extended from Front Street to the beach and as the town was petering out by that point, we turned right and strolled over to the beach. Folks were carrying surfboards down to the beach, and we saw what looked like basic surfing classes being conducted on the beach. Some folks were also trying to surf in the rather small waves leading up to the reef, which was at that point maybe 150 yards offshore.

Monika:

We passed an old Anglican church with the rather appealing name "Holy Innocents Church". It had beautiful stained glass and a simple interior design. The walls on either side could be opened completely so a breeze could come through the church. It must feel almost like having church service outside.

A little farther on, we saw a walkway to the beach, On the beach some outrigger canoes were beached waiting for their owners to take them out. Way out beyond the reef, we saw our ship gently swaying at anchor.

We saw a beginning surfing class practicing on dry land, before they started paddling their surfboards out beyond the reef.

Bob:

Since I was still healing from my coral encounter in Moorea, I stifled the impulse to sign up for a class and head out for the breakers. Instead, we walked back to the Lahaina Pier along the beach, searching for interesting bits of coral or shells. Along the way we met an old but very fit codger hauling his surfboard down to the beach, and it turned out he was originally from Hamburg. So he and Monika fell to talking in German, although it was mostly a monolog about his life and experiences sailing his boat around the South Pacific. I had the distinct impression that had I not been there, Monika would have been invited aboard his boat (to see his "etchings"?), but I was there and nothing untoward happened.

Finally breaking away, we continued to the Lahaina Pier, taking pictures of the Sea Princess anchored well outside the reef as well as the small yacht marina. I also found some striated sands in the outflow of an artesian well that flowed into the beach. Not sure what caused the bands of dark and light sand to intermix like a loosely woven tapestry, but I thought the net effect was quite pretty.

Monika:

We started walking along the beach back towards the town enjoying the sand, looking for shells and trying to take pictures of the rather shallow water with small coral clusters and our ship swaying gently at anchor with the island of Lanai as backdrop.

While walking along we met an old, what I can only term, beach bum. He started chatting, and it turned out that he was originally from Hamburg, so we switched to German and he started telling his life story. He supposedly owned the sailboat he pointed out and had sailed all over the Pacific. How many of his stories were true and how much was a "Seemanns Garn" (American: seaman's yarn) I have no idea, but he was fun to talk to.

A little farther was a pier from where we could watch the beginning surfboarders, who now were trying their newly learned skills out in the gentle surf beyond the reef. The pier enclosed a small marine with sail- and power boats.

Bob:

Since by that time it was well after nine o'clock, we curled back inland to the Old Lahaina Courthouse. The tourist information center was by then open, so I got a free map from the nice lady there and purchased some Hawaiian post cards. Fortunately for me, there was a one-room museum about the old whaling industry on the second floor, and I perused the exhibits there for a little over half an hour. The artifacts on display included harpoon guns, flensing tools for stripping off the blubber from the carcass, and trying vats for boiling the blubber down into oil. The artifacts plus the excellent series of black and white photographs from one of the last traditional whaling expeditions in the 1920s documented both the brutality of the slaughter and the difficulty and danger of the work itself.

It was a bit of a relief to go back outside and sit under a really, really big banyan tree. This tree, covering over two-thirds of an acre and measuring a quarter of a mile (!) in circumference, was planted in 1873 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lahaina's first Protestant Christian mission. Apparently over the many intervening decades Japanese emigrants used their traditional gardening methods to carefully arrange and shape the tree to be very large and symmetrical. That included weighing down the branches with pickle jars so that they would grow back into the ground at designated spots! As a result, that Ficus Benghalensis has become what might be the world's largest Bonsai tree! I was surprised to find out that banyan trees grow only in brackish water and are not found at higher elevations, and that thousands of local mynah birds roost in the tree each night, which must cause quite a commotion right around sundown!

Monika:

Back in the city we went into the Old Courthouse to look at the exhibits of the whaling times, the heyday of Lahaina. It really was quite fascinating and even I read most of signs explaining the history of Lahaina.

Back outside we admired the enormous banyan tree, that covered the square outside of the courthouse, probably about 4 city blocks. It really was quite something to behold and extremely difficult to capture in a picture, even a panoramic. [But Bob kept trying until he got a good one--I am the tiny white blob at the base of the tree in the resulting panoramic picture!]


 


 

Bob:

We, of course, could not stay around long enough to see that interesting event as our ship left in the mid-afternoon. Instead we strolled along Front Street northwards, looking into many of the boutiques along the way. Monika found a nice floral-print dress and I found a nice wood-grain ballpoint pen inside a wooden case carved to resemble a surfboard that I liked well enough to purchase. I would have rather purchased a fountain pen, of course, but I quite realize than I am one of the dwindling, near vanishing breed of human being that still writes letters on paper with fountain pens, so I do not expect to see them for sale in tourist shops.

We also picked up a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola at a grocery store on the north side of town, that fortuitously also had a folding nylon shopping bag on a carabineer for sale at $1.99, a bargain by any standards. Monika also picked up a cold beer, but we soon discovered that we had neglected to bring a bottle opener along for just such an eventuality. So I ended up once again using the edge of a convenient "STOP" sign in the parking lot to pop off the top so that she could drink it on the way back to the ship.

Monika:

Back in the city proper we finally did what most tourist do, "schoppen", the German adaptation of the English word "shopping". At a clothing store called Ichiki, I found a rather nice dress with a yellow flower motif. This would do nicely for our final concert, where we were supposed to wear something Hawaiian.

We finally found a grocery shop at the edge of the city, where we had a great view of the mountains. There we picked up the necessities, a 2 liter bottle of coke and a couple of bottles of the local brew. Of course, I wanted to sample it but did not bring a bottle opener. But Bob is an expert on using a stop sign to open a beer can. Wandering back into the touristy area we met with a few locals.


 

Bob:

Back on board we had a late lunch but decided not to try to tender back to shore afterwards as we felt we had seen the high points of the town of Lahaina and there was insufficient time to rent a moped or a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and go further afield. Maybe next time!

Monika:

Having had enough excitement, we took the next tender back to the ship and had a rather late lunch at the buffet. We rested until it was time to watch the last lifeboats come back. I enjoy watching the ship leaving a port as much as coming into it. So I watched Maui recede and hoping we would come back some other time.

The evening entertainment was a take off on the popular "Dancing with the Stars" program, called "Dancing with the Stripes", where the official dancers picked some of the officers to dance with and the audience got to vote on who they thought danced the best. There actually was one pair that was rather good and we all, our tablemates and us who had come together to watch it, voted for it.



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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