Maui - Saturday 4 May 2013
We flew to Maui in the late afternoon - a 37 minute Hawaiian Airlines flight which ran as smoothly as a bus trip. On and off the plane in 10 minutes flat. Not your average flight attendants either - solid clean-cut young men, looking very masculine and confident. Not an effeminate gesture to be seen! (Not like QANTAS at all.)

By the time we picked up the car and started driving to our hotel, it was getting dark - so we weren't sure what Maui was like at all. We didn't get GPS because Jim was confident there was only one road in Maui - which didn't turn out to be true at all! So I had to navigate using the rather poor maps in a "100 things to do in Maui" magazine - a rather stressful experience. 

For the size of the island, there are a lot of hotels with very similar names. We are staying in the Aston Mahana at Kaanapali, which is not the same as the Aston Kaanapili Shores or the Aston Maui Kaanapali. For someone who is not expecting these minute differences, it caused considerable confusion for some time!

This place turns out to be an apartment, rather than just a hotel room. Very nice to have a bit of space and a kitchen that we'll never use. The receptionist told us there was a complimentary breakfast thrown in the next morning with an island orientation program and a free gift. We were just thinking "how nice" when she added that there was no timeshare presentation involved. Instantly, our suspicions were raised and, needless to say, we didn't go. 

We have since learned that Maui is the king of timeshares and that our apartment block survives mainly on a timeshare basis. Everywhere we go now, we see offers and discounts which we've been warned involved sitting through a timeshare presentation. It's no problem, I suppose, as long as we avoid it. And we're not a very good timeshare proposition, I wouldn't have thought. Unlikely to make this long trip every year for a 2-week holiday in Maui!

We asked the receptionist where we should go for dinner and she recommended the restaurant at a nearby hotel because "it wasn't usually very busy". We should have known this wasn't a great recommendation. Very friendly staff, nice service - but very average and forgettable food. (I won't describe it, Barbara, not worth the effort.)