From Hotel To House

Life is good.

Candace and I woke up this morning craving a beach. We decided to go down two miles to the Kahana Beach Park and were pleasantly surprised when we were the only people on the beach. After our breakfast of banana bread, we got in the water and marveled at the views. You could see the huge mountains to the west and the expanse of the ocean in front of you. After getting our fill of the beach, we went back to the hotel and checked out. We were scheduled to meet the couple we are renting a cottage from for the month so we headed out to Haiku to check it out.

We met up with Katheryn and Zam, our fun-loving homeowners who are on vacation for the next month. They gave us a brief tour and bid us adieu. The house we are staying in is truly beautiful. We've got about two acres total of land here to ourselves, and we've been informed that we can explore to our hearts' content. The house has a big window right in the main living area that gets all the perfect ocean breezes, meaning we don't have to run any fans or air conditioning. You just have to be quick when the rain comes since it can happen without much warning!

We ventured into Kahului for our errands this afternoon. We needed groceries first off because Candace misses cooking her own meals. After having to keep our kitchen clean and traveling, we've had our fill of takeout food. Of course, this created a perfect opportunity to go see the new Whole Foods we are working at starting on Tuesday. The store is beautiful, with plenty of outdoor seating and a HUGE produce section. After meeting the produce guy Rob, we left with a veritable cornucopia of fruit. As a plus, almost all of it was grown on Maui.

The first thing about produce in Maui is that if you buy local everything is inexpensive. The dream of 99 cent pineapples is real, so we picked one up straight away. We were also tipped off about canary melons, which I have had before but they were super expensive back in Texas. Here they were about three dollars for the whole thing. Not too shabby! We also picked up some strawberry papaya, a giant avocado that has a great nutty flavor to it, and some asparagus to go with the local Kajiki fillets(blue marlin) we bought for dinner. The fish is plentiful and looks amazing in Maui, so we are going to work our way through it all one fillet at a time.

The next stop was Starbucks, as Candace was getting a bit decaffeinated through our shopping. With our coffees in hand, we set off for more supplies at the local Kmart. You know, all that stuff you realize you can't live without once you arrive. Our main goal was the firmest pillows possible, as the ones left with us were way too squishy for my giant head.

After grabbing that, we headed back to the house and have settled in for a relaxing evening. Tomorrow we'll get back to the job of setting up for semi-permanent life on Maui. Tonight though, we will just bask in the beauty we have lucked ourselves into and hope we can keep it going as long as possible.

And with that, I think I will grab a local brew and relax listening to the birds and breezes of mountain life in Maui.