Day 20

Maui, Hawaii

Pool scene.	Susie and Gina at the Marriott's Luau.

How touristy! The luau, anyway. John somehow gets up at the crack of dawn to WORK and then herds anyone who can get vertical out to the beach to snorkel. Mike and Susie go along, with Kate and Gina following later. The snorkelers see turtles, puffers, angelfish, tangs, etc. etc. in the early morning.

In the afternoon, Mike and Susie take an introductory orientation to scuba diving, and Mike then opts for the ocean dive afterwards and he's really excited about it and wants to be a diver now. (Great! another easily accessible and cheap hobby....)

We go to the Marriott's luau because Kate insists we have to do something Hawaiian and it's a little crazy. A few hundred luau-goers are regaled by a Fijian stand-up comedian for awhile (he even shimmies up a tree) and then we are fed various things including the requisite roast pig, with dinner followed by a show of hula dancing and fire/knife dancing. It's very windy and we can even feel a little rain during the show.

Maui is beautiful as ever, a bit crowded with all the tourists, but everyone's having a good time. It's such a contrast to Waikiki, which is a little like Manhattan with a beach thrown in. We can hear the ocean outside our windows. Don't they ever turn it off, night or day??? There are also weird-sounding birds who make weird sounds at various intervals. But you could easily get to like it...

We can't imagine how we will pack all the junk we have accumulated, mostly in the past few days, into our one carry-on each for the return trip home Friday. One possibility is throwing out the ton of dirty and now very old clothes we've brought. With the beach-going activities, the chief laundress here has lost her enthusiasm for washing out the socks every night... Besides, in Hawaii you mainly need a swimsuit and some amphibious sandals and an old tee shirt to put over it all.