Shopping, surfers, and sunset

True to our "spend half a day doing nothing, then the other half being busy" plans for the last few days, we spent the morning in the sun, and then cleaned up and headed to Lahaina for lunch, walking around, taking some pictures (duh, I have over 2 GIGABYTES of pictures), and a sunset cruise, before heading to McDonalds for Dinner.

Lunch was at the VERY busy, and very good Cheeseburger in Paradise.  Worth a stop, but not the best cheeseburger ever, despite the claims.  but the view out over the Lahaina harbor was great.  The lighthouse and the main harbor are pretty close by.  We were (again) able to hold off the urge to buy over-priced t-shirts at every stop.

Sunset in Hawaii is a nearly religious experience.

After lunch we cruised around some and did some souvenir shopping to hide from the sun, and then we went out for a sunset cruise.  The cruise was cool, but not quite what we were expecting.  The "open-bar" turned into 3 drink coupons, with more available for $4 per.  Despite our unhappiness with the change in policy, that was unaccompanied by a change in price, we survived, and we didn't need to buy extra coupons because we were being good.

The view from the boat was incredible.  First, we left Lahaina and turned south, down the coast.  From this view we got to see the mountains over Lahaina lit up by the setting sun, and casting cool shadows as a result of some low cloud cover.  We got to see some "spinners", that is what Hawaiians call bottle-nosed dolphins.  The came within about 15 feet of the boat, but I totally had the wrong lens to get a good picture of them.  It had NOTHING to do with the fact that I just wasn't quick enough on the shutter ;).

After we turned back north we got to watch the sun set before heading back in to the harbor.  Sunset in Hawaii is a nearly religious experience.  Really.  Even the locals love to watch the sunset.  The sunset from our hotel was obstructed by offshore islands, but this one was not.  We were able to enjoy, and photograph a beautiful sunset, but alas, there was no green flash present today.

This was the last full day on Maui, off to Oahu in the morning.