Maui day 12: All good things come to an end

Today was our last day in Maui. I woke up feeling a bit down, and the feeling continued all day. We’ve had such a great time here and it’s difficult to leave all this beauty behind. Even though Hawaii is only a 5-hour flight from Sacramento, vacationing here is an expensive proposition and I don’t know when we’ll be able to return.

We spent the morning at Maluaka Beach. My wife and I had been here for sunset a few days ago and thought it might be a good spot for swimming, which it was.

Maluaka Beach—organized boating trip (alas, not for us)

To see more pictures of Maluaka Beach, please go to this post.

The grounds of the Makena Beach & Golf Resort adjacent to Maluaka Beach are studded with coconut palms. They symbolize this tropical paradise more than any other plant.

Makena Beach & Golf Resort

Coconut palms

After lunch, we finally went geocaching. We’d brought a travel bug that my older daughter had retrieved from a geocache in Davis and were hoping to find another one in a cache in Kīhei or Wailea.

Travel bug we’d brought from California

We weren’t able to find the first two geocaches we tried, but we got to see Keawakapu Beach in Kīhei, yet another stunning South Maui beach. There are so many, you’d need a month to visit them all!

Keawakapu Beach in Kīhei

Keawakapu Beach in Kīhei

Keawakapu Beach in Kīhei

Fortunately, we had more luck with the third geocache we tried:

Geocache container

Most geocaches are not easy to find unless you look very closely!

The box contained a travel bug that originally come from England and had already traveled over 32,000 miles! We’ll take it back to Davis and will place in there.

Since today was a last day, we went back once last time to Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice. This small chain with locations in Kīhei, Lāhainā and Kahului offers the best shave ice I’ve ever had. The ice is shaved so finely that once the flavoring has been applied it’s the smooth consistency of a slightly soft sorbet. It tastes like Hawaii in a cup, especially if you choose a flavor like passionfruit or coconut.

Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice in Kīhei

Shave ice with passionfruit, coconut and pink lemonade flavoring

These three phone booths are in the parking lot of Ululani’s, and I just had to photograph them

Our last outing of the day was a lū'au at the Marriott on Wailea Beach. 

Wailea Beach as seen from the Marriott

We hadn’t been sure if we wanted to do a lū'au since it’s such a touristy affair, but in the end we were glad we did.

Lū'au grounds at the Wailea Marriott

The location was stunning. The lū'au grounds were just off Wailea Beach, surrounded by coconut palms.

Ho hum, more coconut palms!

And another one!

The first major event of the lū'au was the imu ceremony where the kālua pig is removed from the pit (called “imu” in Hawaiian). It had been slow-cooking over hot rocks for many hours, and even though I’m not much of a pork eater, I must admit that it was absolutely delicious.

After dinner—a buffet with many different options, most of them very good—the entertainment started. The stage at the Marriott faces the ocean, and the evening sky formed a stunning backdrop for the dancers.

The final act was an amazing fire and knife dancer whose name unfortunately I can’t remember. Even though I knew that he wouldn’t drop his torches and/or burn himself, I was still on edge.

All too soon the show was over and it was time to head back to the condo to finish packing. Our plane leaves tomorrow morning.

Here are the final two photos I took. No, I wasn’t drunk even though I had several piña coladas at the open bar, but these soft, dreamy images perfectly encompass the balmy tropical nights here on Maui.

I hope you enjoyed my daily posts from Maui. I’ll be taking a few days off to settle back into my everyday routine. Then I’ll have an update on how our garden at home did in our absence.

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• Maui 2013 trip index