Visit Dates: October 3-11, 2021
When it looked like the pandemic was slowing – spring of 2021, a group of friends planned to go to Hawaii the following fall. Come October the pandemic was still going but we were all vaccinated and boostered and got safe travel permits to go on the trip.
We all booked cottages at the unfortunately named International Colony Club on Maui. One of our friends’ aunts had a cottage there back in the 1960s and 1970s and our friend remembers having a blast. The prices are reasonable – actually cheaper than a house on the northern Oregon coast (Cannon Beach, Seaside, Lincoln City, etc). Of course you have to pay for the trip there. Apparently the “International” now means old white anglos. We didn’t experience much diversity there – and we didn’t add any.
The facility is located across the highway from the Kaanapali resorts and is made up of 40-50 little cottages all with beautiful lanai’s (aka porches). There are two swimming pools and it was less than half a mile from the public beach – which was fabulous. But crossing that busy highway was a drag even though there is a stop light there.
Here is a picture of the place we stayed. Our lanai was glassed in with louvered panes. The glass made it quite warm in the afternoons; not as nice as the more open lanais of our friends cottages, but beautiful and comfortable nonetheless.
The gardeners at the ICC keep the grounds beautiful.
Cattle egrets were all over the facility but are very skittish. I finally caught up with one. Thanks as always to my birder friend Frances Oliver for the ID.
Beach sunsets are beautiful everywhere; on our first night we stepped outside one of the couple’s houses to take in the view.
We all went out to dinner one night and had another great view of the sunset.
Yes, we did go to the beach – every day. The park is a grassy area just above the beach proper. That’s Molokai across the way. We went to Molokai about 15 years ago with Carla’s parents. Not one of our best trips. I was two weeks pre cancer surgery, my mother-in-law had health issues, and my father-in-law had his own cancer battle and died the week we got back. I think he secretly would have liked to die in Hawaii.
One day Carla and I took an excursion via Lyft to Kihei in search of a place we might want to take the family to in a year or so. We spotted a Shave Ice stand when we wandered around; since we wanted to try it we dove in! I used to think they were just fancy snow-cones but they are so much more. One year back when I was still working, we had an employee appreciation event with a Hawaiian Shave Ice booth. I got brave and tried one with ice cream. One of the best culinary choices I’ve ever made. Here I have two flavors on shave ice over a scoop of ice cream with a drizzle of sweetened condensed milk on top. Calories anyone?
There are three very nice contiguous beaches in Kihei there. Unfortunately, there wasn’t easy access to any of them from the place Carla scouted out on VRBO. We’ll keep looking. That’s still Maui across the water; if you look closely you can see the wind turbines on the western slope. When we flew in we passed over them, turned around and passed over them again before landing.
Confession time. It was hot (is that a reason or an excuse?) and we had been walking around quite a bit. So, what did we do? Well, we went back to the Shave Ice stand for another go – small this time, without ice cream. Yum.
On Saturday night we went with one of the other couples to Kimo’s in Lahaina for dinner. It was great and Carla and I shared the fantastic Hula Pie for desert: macadamia nut ice cream on a chocolate cookie crust and covered with fudge and whipped cream. Um, yeah we might have put on a pound or two on the trip. We wandered through some of the Lahaina shops after dinner. And we got to enjoy another sunset.
On Sunday the island was rocked by big winds and rain. We tried going to the beach between squalls but the water was much too choppy. But we did walk along the boardwalk and got a few pictures of the storm coming over the mountain.
We had an adventure trying to get a Lyft back to the airport on Monday afternoon; but made it with time to spare. We enjoyed our time immensely and look forward to going back next year.
