Lahaina, Maui

This may be a bit random in places.

When Dani and I cruised these island last month on NCL’s Pride of America, there were two stops in Maui. Both of them on the other side of the island. Both involving actual docks. When I have been here before, passing through on my way too/from Australia on both Royal and Celebrity, the Maui stop was here in Lahaina.  It was a tender port then, it is still a tender port.

I don’t know specifically why this side of the island. It could be history – been there, coming back.  It could be the lack of other ships. It could be expense, the town may charge less for the use of the pier than it costs on the other side of the island for docking… According to the local shop folks, this might just have been the first ship through this year. (and obviously none last year). Cruisemapper doesn’t have a lot of say (link herehttps://www.cruisemapper.com/ports/lahaina-port-83) and according to the Port Call list-  there are only seven more ships due through here before the end of the year.  That is not a whole lot of business. Yes, there are a ton of time shares, some really fine beaches, but other than that? Meh.

Why? This is a small, obviously touristy area with wooden buildings, boardwalks, a small park – with lovely twisted trees and not much else.

I had two errands today – the first was simple. Stop at the Quilt & Fabric shop to see if they had embroidery floss. I am running low on one color. She did have it – altho her storage was interesting. Cabinet with drawers, loose floss sorted by color. I was able to find my 791. Of note – this was old floss, old, old DMC. The label was the old style with shiny gold borders…

Following this I had an extremely interesting experience with MAPS directions. I was looking for a drug store or grocery store a bit out of town. The kind of place not directed toward tourists, but the kind of place that was going to carry simple things like hair conditioner… Well, the route maps took me was interesting . The flowers were nice.

but heading down back streets, through a falling down fence, ignoring “No Trespassing” signs to cut through a boat repair yard, along long dead railroad tracks finally landed me in at a decent shopping center about a mile or so out of town. The Walgreens had hair conditioner. The Starbucks only had driver thru – so no iced coffee for the way back. Much more their loss…

Rather than trust the GPS,  just headed one block toward the ocean, then turned left to follow the highway back toward the main section of tourist traps.

A small park set up featured this lovely old engine along with a number of food trucks.

When I hit one of the main cross streets I just turned and went straight toward the pier. Getting back was a real pain. The ship was involved in re-organizing their tenders by number, they had a medical transport to get to shore and then there were the extremely dumb passengers.

We cleared immigration this morning. Ok – that is not hard. Show up with your passport (plus papers for the non-US/non-Canadians), talk to the nice officer, go back to your cabin and head toward the tender deck. Every three minutes the Cruise Director was clearly announcing that you HAD to take a photo ID with you to get back on the ship. Didn’t need to be your passport, but it had to be some kind of official ID with a picture….

Well, guess what – the couple in front of me on the pier didn’t have any ID. They had their SeaPass cards, they had credit cards. But no picture ID. By the time  the poor security guy had them sorted, the tender I was planning on taking had left. Which left me (see medical transport above) with standing around for over 30 minutes before they finally started boarding the next one. Little shade, no water….no place to sit.

I escaped to a lounge and just relaxed for the remainder of the day….

which meant that I put in more stitches on the Countdown Calendar followed by starting the first critter in the mini-haunting SAL. And yes, I got bored and played with the fence.