Wowie Maui

Our first port of call was beautiful Lahaina, Maui which had a lovely main street to wander up and down, however 2 young boys are not conducive to shopping  . . . and we had no room in our suitcases for souvenirs.  Lots of surfers and paddleboarders to watch during the tendering process (using lifeboats to get ashore in the shallow harbour).

We decided to book spots on the Atlantis Submarine tour, which took us and 36 other people down to 130 feet for a 45 minute exploration of the ocean floor.  Such amazing schools of fish, a shipwreck, plate coral reefs and even a spotted eagle stingray!  We got to watch the submarine surface from the previous tour before we got on, then it was "down the hatch" for each of us!  Did you know that as you go down in depth, the colours change??  Neon colours fade, red items turn purple etc

There is a huge banyan tree in the town square which was incredibly tempting for the boys to climb so we had to hurry on!  It was a super hot day, so we simply wandered over to find a more sheltered beach (away from the surfers / harbour) that the kids would enjoy.

 This local beach was near a few holiday homes and a small subdivision - it was perfect!  And we could even stare at our ship in the distance!  The boys lucked out in a major way though . . . we walked past a house with a dozen used boogie boards up for sale.  They only wanted $5-6 each for the kid sized ones, so out come the rest of the boys US spending money and we had boogie boards for the boys!  So much for the "no souvenirs" idea.  LOL  (Hey - they wanted $30 to rent them for an hour in Waikiki so this was a great deal)

 Unschooling approach #1:  Pick up sea side debris and examine it.  This turned out to be a crab shell (exoskeleton) which was quite fragile as we discovered.  Anyhow, it was great fun getting a close look at the pincers!

So, boogie boards in tow, we reboarded the ship for a late lunch and ice cream (despite pleas for a treat in town, we were firm that there was plenty available on board for us to enjoy that was already paid for!).  Now we were headed out to sea for 5 days straight towards Pago Pago, American Samoa.   As you can tell from the previous post, this wasn't such a hardship to be stuck at sea when there nothing to do but sleep, eat, read and swim!