Day Eight January 13: Lahaina, Maui

The ship approached the area where we would anchor in the dark and as we got close to land it started to brighten enough to see. Whales EVERYWHERE today. Three pair of whales from the front, side and back of the ship. Quite a site to see. There are about 13,000 whales that make their winter home in Hawaii but most hang around Maui for some reason.

Have our first shore excursion today to see waterfalls of Maui. Josh from Hawaii lead our expedition starting with an 1.5 hour drive through the island and up to the rain forest area. It was an easy hike for the most part but some narrow balance beam type spots and wet tricky rocks. We all made it and hope for some picture download time. After the hike back in Lahaina we met up with Tom Gardner and wife Tracy who are cranberry growers and were on holiday in the area for a couple more nights. We took a tender back to the ship after walking a bit around town. Tonight was a Hawaii open air dinner at the pool deck. Very nicely done. We all danced afterward along with many other passengers.

Note: Still trying to figure the new Microsoft surface 10 out. Reducing picture size so as to upload them in a reasonable time has been difficult to say the least. Now using Paint to do the resize, save as other and download. seems to be working better reducing from 8MB down to about 1000KB picture size.