Hawaiian Honeymoon - Part 1

So...a quick catch-up: I'm married to Jason Cochran as of May 16, 2009 and currently on Maui, Hawaii. I have a great view of the Pacific from my twelfth floor hotel room, and can hear the waves and other sounds of the sea through my open patio door. Jason and I have just gotten back from an afternoon stroll to a nearby deli for lunch, and are about to get back into our studies for our Open Water Certification for Scuba tomorrow and Tuesday. Hopefully we will pass with flying colors, and then do a beach dive with our instructor on Wednesday to see sea-turtles before we leave. We've been here since Monday of last week, and have done a lot in our time here so far. We rented a Harley and drove the road to Hana, something which was both great and not great, as the road itself is a beautiful drive with views of rocky sea cliffs dropping straight down into the ocean on one side, and rainforest creeping up mountainsides on the other. The not great part was my seat on the Electra Glide we rented. It was a stock passenger seat, which was comfortable to begin with, but as we progressed on the 54 mile, 2.5 hour trip (one way), my butt protested and required a couple stops to walk around and get the blood flowing again. The ride made me think of the women who ride to Sturgis or other cross country type trips on the backs of motorcycles with nothing more than a square of padded leather the size of a CD case under them. I don't know how they do it...

Regardless, it was a pretty drive and my sore butt got over being sore and I can now say I am happy we did it. Jason enjoyed himself and is proud he can say he has ridden the road to Hana on a motorcycle! We also have enjoyed ourselves by eating whatever we please, though it hasn't been Hawaiian food...and we're skipping the luau this trip, but we've had Hawaiian beer and enjoyed that. We've been snorkeling like crazy, and yesterday there was a 'jelly fish warning' sign outside our hotel, and when we spoke to the man at the counter, he told us someone had been stung by a Man o' War the day before, and that he was advising people to swim in the pool instead of the ocean. We decided to skip the pool and to try and be aware of our surroundings, and were able to swim for an hour and a half around a small reef area with fish and an octopus before Jason spotted a Man o' War a few feet from himself and we hightailed it out of there. The poor little guy was washed on shore, where we watched it for a little while get pushed around by the tide, warning a few passerbys of its presence, but as Jason put it "we can't babysit it forever" and so we left, knowing that some unaware beach walker was going to step on it at some point. Jason has been taking photos underwater, and so we'll get those developed when we get back. He's also picked up quite a collection of "Aloha" shirts - apparently in Hawaii, they don't call them Hawaiian shirts ;)

I'll write more later...stay tuned for part 2.