Maui 2016 Part 1

Friday/Saturday – Getting There

When I said last year that Maui was a pain to get to, I didn’t know the half of it! We actually hadn’t planned on going back to Maui so soon, but then we got the email from Jenny saying they were selling the condo at Wailea Point and it was now or never. Well, that was a no-brainer. We weren’t going to miss our last chance to go to Maui!

So here we were, touching down at the Kahului Airport, 36 looooong hours after we’d left home. The adventure had actually started Thursday night when the phone rang just as we were going to bed. It was American Airlines saying that our flight in the morning would be delayed 45 minutes. Hmmm, that would cut our layover in Dallas in half. I thought we could still make the connection as long as there weren’t any other issues, but I wasn’t sure that our luggage would. Just in case, we threw a change of clothes and some basic toiletries into Ron’s backpack.

When we got to the airport the next morning, it looked like things were going to work out. The crew was on the plane, the passengers were on the plane, the doors were closed. But then the pilot came on the intercom and announced that there was some bad weather near Dallas. We were going to have to put more fuel in the plane and take a longer route to avoid the storm. There went our connection. :-(

A Sea Turtle Goes Home

This week I had the opportunity to witness something really special – the release of a rehabilitated sea turtle back into the Gulf of Mexico. This is something I’ve wanted to see for a long time so when I got an email from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium that they were releasing Kreacher, a young loggerhead turtle, from Clearwater Beach, I had to go.
 
Kreacher was found floating half a mile off of Clearwater Beach on May 8. After being treated at the CMA for gastrointestinal problems, she was well and ready to go back home. Before the release, the CMA partnered with the Sea Turtle Conservancy to attach a satellite tracking device to Kreacher’s shell for research purposes. This was CMA’s second turtle to be fitted with a tracking tag. Ozzy, released last September, traveled all the way up to the Outer Banks of North Carolina before her tag stopped working a few months later.

The Key to Happiness - Travel

"We'll always have Paris" - Girls' Trip, June 2011

Have you seen the latest ad from Groupon called “Haves vs. Have-Dones”? I love this ad because I’ve always thought that the most precious gifts are gifts of shared experiences, doing and seeing new things with the ones I love. And it turns out that there is scientific research to back this up. An article by Thomas Gilovich and Amit Kumar titled “We’ll Always Have Paris” shows that people who spend money on experiences (such as a trip or even a visit to a museum) tend to be happier than people who purchase material goods.

One reason for this is adaptation. Material purchases quickly became the new normal and we stop noticing them. On the other hand, we talk about our experiences long after they occur. Experiences stay alive in the stories we tell, and even a less-than-perfect experience can turn into funny family lore. (Remember that insane taxi driver we had on our first trip to Vegas??)

One Love - Sandals Negril Part 3

Thursday

I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep so I went out on the balcony to read. I could hear Henry the peacock making his morning cat sounds over at Bayside. It was even breezier that day and the red flags were up. That meant there wouldn’t be any watersports, so when Ron got up we decided it would be a good day to go to Beaches Negril to check out their pools.

It was a quick $5 cab ride to Beaches where we settled in by the main pool. Beaches was a larger property than Sandals and had a Polynesian feel, with dark wood balconies and window shutters. There was a pretty courtyard, a large main pool and a water park with a lazy river and water slides. Of course, my favorite part of the resort was Café de Paris, the French pastry shop. Too bad Sandals Negril didn’t have one of those. :-)