All Hallow's Eve

Believe it or not, Halloween is kinda a big deal in Maui.  You wouldn't really suspect that, what with all the other awesome stuff happening on the island.  However, Hawaiians love to dress up!

I managed to convince a friend to go out with me that night, and we met up with a bunch of people from my ward.  We drove around the Lahaina side, and they had a big huge Halloween party on Front Street.  It was awesome - and just a little bit crazy.  Front street is part of this really touristy area in a very touristy town.  It runs along the coast, and is lined with restaurants and all those little souvenir shops you just love to spend your money in.  They call it Halloween on Front Street, and they shut down the entire block, and people just roam up and down in their costumes.

I couldn't believe how many creative costumes I saw, and just how all-out people went on them!  We did see some rather scandalous outfits, but keep in mind I am in Maui where nude beaches are, if not accepted, they are at least "ignored" by law enforcement.

We spent a couple hours walking up and down the street, and staring at other costumes.

Just an example of what was going on that night.  It was a wild party!

If you look closely at the guy standing on the sidewalk right under the sign, he is dressed like Bane.  And he actually looked like him!  It was kinda creepy.

Me and all of my friends.  I'm the pirate on the end.

I found the 3 Amigos!!

I just had to have a picture with these two.  They were my heros, because their entire group was dressed up as characters from Batman.  Seriously, I'm not obsessed...

Eventually we headed home since I did, in fact, have to work the next morning.  It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I got to go.  However, I will be glad when I return to the mainland, and I can celebrate Halloween with some colored leaves, and cooler weather!

Halloween at work!

Remember how Halloween is my very favorite holiday?  This year wasn't quite so exciting considering I didn't really have the means to make a fun new costume this year.  I ended up recycling a costume from a couple years ago since no one here had ever seen it.  However, I was super excited because I was finally allowed to dress up for work!  I tried to keep it a little low key since I still am a doctor, and I was still pulling teeth out of people's mouths all day.  I did get to have some fun, though!

Me and the staff at our clinic.  We are very festive.

Our pedodontist, Dr. Michelle dressed up as a lion! 

Check out my awesome Bat belt!

I love fancy makeup, and I love it even more when I get to wear fake lashes and Batman earrings!

We had a total blast dressing up at the clinic, although I was a little surprised that we had several people decide to go with Batman.  Probably because Batman is awesome!



It was a pretty good day.  I just hope I didn't scare any of the kids (or the adults, for that matter).

Visitors continued

Since the tsunami kinda upset our plans, we took it fairly easy on Sunday.  We ended up driving upcountry to visit the Ali'i Kula lavender farm.  I think probably one of the more exciting things was discovering a pair of chameleons hanging out on a tree.

After wandering about, we ate some delicious lavender scones with lavender Liliko'i jelly (that's passion fruit).  Also, I was pleased to discover that there was a pumpkin patch here on Maui!  Since I freakin' love October, and Halloween we just had to stop for a minute.

That's right, a pumpkin patch.  In Hawaii!

Check it out, pumpkins and the ocean in the same photo.

We then headed off to Lahaina to go shopping and get some dinner.  We also spent some time hanging around the banya tree.  This was neat since it is a single tree that has all these little off-shoots taking over an entire park.  

We didn't stay out too late since we were planning on going up to Haleakela the next morning for the sunrise.  We drug ourselves out of bed at about 3 am, and made the 2 hour drive up the mountain in the dark.  It was much colder than it was the last time I went up, but I was determined that this time I was going to get the best spot while waiting for the sunrise.  (Last time I went the look-out was completely overrun by tourists.)  I ended up sitting out on the ledge for about an hour bundled up in my blanket.  It was actually very cleansing, and somewhat relaxing to sit and read a book on my phone while waiting in the frigid pre-dawn morning.  I was not disappointed when the sun finally came up, and I got some excellent pictures of the sun.

There is a little building up on the summit.  My friends kinda hid out there since it was so stinking cold.

Haleakala means "house of the sun."  I think you can see why.

I always love going up for the sunrise.  Also, this is supposed to be one of the best places in the world for stargazing, but both times I've gone up, it has also been a full moon, so we haven't seen many stars. I'm already planning a trip up during a New Moon so I can stargaze!

The rest of the day was pretty busy, especially considering we were only running on a few hours of sleep.  We stopped at the Surfing Goat farm to try out some goat cheese, then we spent a few hours at the beach.  We finished off the night by going to a fancy luau at the Grand Wailea.

Here are some very nice young Polynesian men opening up the emu, or the Hawaiian oven where they bury a pig underground and cook it.  This is how you make kalua pork.  Yum!

The food was delicious, they had an unlimited supply of virgin pina coladas, and they even convinced me to get up on stage and learn the hula.  I had a blast!  Not to mention the whole performance complete with hula dancers, and fire dancers.
It was great fun to have some visitors.  We packed a ton of activities into just a couple of days, and I'm pretty sure I drove over 300 miles while they were here.  It was crazy!  This was just a brief glimpse, since I took about 150 pictures of the whole weekend.  Thanks for visiting!!

Visitors and a Tsunami

The weekend after I came back from the mainland, I had a couple of friends come to visit me.  My friend Kate was room-mates with me back during freshman year in college.  She got married later that year, but we've kept in contact ever since then.  She lives in California now, meaning we haven't seen each other for a couple of years.  Needless to say, I was pretty excited when she told me she was buying tickets to Maui!

She flew into Maui on Thursday night, and a friend of hers flew in with her.  Unfortunately I still had work on Friday, so they managed to entertain themselves for the day.

That weekend I got to play tour guide, and I'm pretty sure we packed about a month's worth of activities into about four days!  Here's a brief glimpse into our reunion weekend.
Saturday we spent the morning at the swap meet, then we took the trip around the island to Hana.  This will be my third trip around, and we stopped at a lot of the same places I'd been to before.

If you look closely, this sign warns us to stay back on account of the blowhole.  Clearly we had no qualms getting close to this sign!

Here is the aforementioned blowhole.  Oh yeah, and some kids that were perhaps a tad too close!

I saw this little graveyard.  I thought it looked kinda peaceful with the sunlight streaming through and hitting the surfboard...

Here's Kate looking rather pensive while enjoying the black sand beach,

I've been to these little lava tube freshwater pools before, and it proved just as difficult to get a picture as before.  What you can't see is that there is a cave filled with water, and this cave branches off to both the left and the right.  On my last visit here I had explored the extent of the cave, even though it is quite literally pitch black.  I was attempting to play tour guide, and coax my rather reluctant friends to swim to the back of the left lava tube.  However, as I started swimming I got a whiff of some rather potent smoke which was hovering over the top of the water.  Yes, my friends, someone was hiding in the back of the lava tube smoking pot.  The best part of the story was that despite us complaining and yelling, they didn't make a sound, (as if their smoke, and the abandoned pair of slippers at the top didn't give them away).  Well we decided to leave them to their own devices, and we got a good laugh out of it.

We made it around to Hana, then we headed back the way we came.  Too bad it got dark before we actually made it back.  That road is incredibly twisty so one of my passengers started getting carsick; it's a narrow, pitch black road through the jungle.  The drive back was a bit eerie.  It was even more eerie when about an hour after getting home I started getting all these text messages about a tsunami warning.
So... I'm from the mainland.  I don't know anything about tsunamis.  I kinda freaked out because the Kahului harbor, which is basically across the street from my apartment, historically gets hit the worst.  They were evacuating everyone in the "danger zone," and we were smack in the middle of that zone!  After making some calls, a good friend of mine offered her place for me and my two friends.  We ended up huddling around the TV watching everyone being evacuated on the news.  Apparently there was a rather large earthquake in Vancouver that sent waves toward the Hawaiian islands.  According to the experts, it's usually the 3rd or 4th wave that is the most destructive, and they come at 20 minute intervals.  That meant is was quite late into the night before they decided it wasn't as bad as initially predicted, and it was early the next morning when we were given the all clear.

After being evacuated for one, I started noticing evidence of past tsunami's all around the island.  These signs were posted all over the Big Island, but more on that later!

Anyway, after getting a nice little scare, and making my two guests sleep at a stranger's house, we were able to go back to my apartment.  Apparently we had gotten the worst of it in Maui, and despite reports of a 4 foot wave, there was no damage.

It was quite the adventure, and we were amused to find this being sold in the stores by the next day.  Yeah... I didn't buy one.