We woke up a little after 6am, which makes sense as it was 8 am in Los Angeles. For breakfast we walked just a few paces to the Kihei Caffe, which seems to specialize in massive portions of everything. I had a large cinnamon roll while Nicole finished about half of her pancakes. As we digested, we debated our next course of action.
We ended up going back to Maluaka Beach since it is supposed to be a good spot to see green sea turtles — even referred to as “Turtle Town.” It was only about 9am, but the beach was already fairly crowded by the time we arrived. Ugh. It’s all those people from the east coast or midwest who have a time zone advantage and were probably up at 3am to go see the sunrise from the top of Haleakala then came down, had breakfast, and then ruined Bricole’s visit to the beach.
I swam around in search of my friends, the turtles, but perhaps all the people had already scared them away. I did see a few humuhumunukunukuapua’as (Hawaii’s state fish) swimming around, but no turtles. After spending a few hours relaxing at the beach and watching the clouds roll by as honeymooners awkwardly got sunburnt while attempting to snorkel, we called it a day and returned to the hotel to regroup.
I got a loco moco plate lunch from L&L. Hot take: the mac salad and overall consistency of the dish that’s made at our local L&L in El Segundo is actually far superior, which is kind of a shame. Hawai’i needs to up its game. This did not change the fact that like most L&Ls, it seemed very popular nonetheless. We returned once more to the hotel before I headed out on a run.
I ran all the way down from Kihei to Wailea and then joined a coastal trail. The heat of the day combined with an undigested Loco Moco did cause a few issues about halfway through my run. I had to ignore all the “guests and residents only” signs to dart off path and into a very posh Marriott in search of a bathroom. The run had made me a little ill, but better than how I would feel later in the night.
Lacking the desire to look up a new place to eat dinner, we simply returned to the Maui Brewing Co. The mood was tense as the election was being decided while we ate a pizza. I fell into depression and not just because of Trump’s looming victory. While there are people out there who may have begrudgingly voted for him, there are millions more who enthusiastically embraced his brand of hate and bigotry. To quote Senator Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, “This is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.”
passports & pepto bismol 