Feb.16, 2015---Kapalua and TripAdvisor Meet and Greet:

Praise the Lord!!!  The ocean is cooperating today!  I was ready at 9:30 anxiously looking forward to snorkeling, finally!  We've been on the islands 10 days now and had only been snorkeling 4 times (all on Kauai and 2 of those times were in the man made protected Lydgate park Morgan's Pond).  That's a record for me!  Definitely time to kick it into gear!  So if I uploaded too many snorkeling pictures, it's just because I was so excited.  Anyway---hubby wasn't as excited as me, so we didn't actually leave our condo in Kihei until about 11:00.  We had plans to go to a TripAdvisor Meet and Greet at Duke's in Kahana (I think) at around 3, so we headed up that way to snorkel---Kapalua Beach.  We weren't the only ones excited to get to the beach!  There was quite a crowd, but we headed straight into the water.

  Immediately we saw lots of fish.  orange spine surgeonfish

 

School of teardrop butterflyfish and a few other assorted fish

  school of surgeonfish and dark trumpetfish.

 Pair of ornate butterflyfish and pair of pebbled butterflyfish.

 Now here's a school of fish I don't remember ever seeing before which surprises me since there were so many of them around Kapalua today!----fantail filefish

  male bullethead parrotfish

 long nose butterflyfish

  lei triggerfish

  squaretail file fish

  this guy was large.  Looks like some sort of snapper.

 a large yellow trumpetfish

  surge wrasse and a blue travelly

  black triggerfish

  moray eel swimming away

 The darkest blue goatfish I've ever seen.

   big school of surgeonfish again.

  large stripebelly puffer.

 Sailfin tang

  female pearl wrasse

After snorkeling awhile, we were worried that it was getting near time for the Meet and Greet, so we got out only to find it was only about 2.  Oh well, if I went back in I'd probably be there another 2 hours, so we sat on the grass and enjoyed the weather and views for a bit, then changed into dry clothes and headed out.

 Had to take a picture of one of the pretty pink hibiscuses all over the place.

  Just admiring the view from where we parked by Duke's.

 Walking up to Duke's.  Once there, we told the server we were meeting people but we had no idea whom.  Mamma0233 was sitting right there, so chimed in, so we had a party of 3 then.  Soon after that southerngirl528 showed up.  Then DreaminofMaui and his wife.  Shortly after that came AkamaiNick4SW.  We were so busy visiting and having a great time, that no one took pictures of the group.  We visited for a good 2 hours before we decided to let the waiter have his table back.

  We even got a high 5 from a whale.

  On our way out, I stopped to say, "hi" to the local koi.

  By now it was about 5:30, so we headed back towards Kihei.

 Stopped at Beach Bums in Maalaea Harbor for dinner.   My prime rib was great---and we had a Worldmark coupon for it making it only $15.99.  Ken was a bit disappointed that his ribs didn't fall off the bone, but he said they were good.  We both had enough leftovers for another day.   I was also surprised to find pineapple in my slaw!  I never would have thought of putting pineapple in slaw, but it was very good! 

  we thought we might see sunset from the lighthouse on our way to the harbor, but found you can't see the sun set over the ocean from there, so no sunset picture tonight.  Dining overlooking the marina was really nice, though.

 We did our usual pool and Jacuzzi time.  End to a perfect day!