The Rambling Writer’s Maui Vacation, part 2: Back to the Nurturing Sea

Finally back to the sea! For me — part mermaid, part otter — it’s all about the snorkeling.

After many delays and trip cancellations due to health issues in the last few years, I had finally told Thor in the spring that we WERE going to take at least an easy tropic trip so we could return to the sea before I withered away. (I relate to the mythical Greek giant Antaeus, who was finally killed by Hercules once his life-sustaining connection to the earth was broken. With me, it’s immersion in the sea.) Anyway, we had scheduled a trip to Maui (easy flight from the Pacific Northwest) in October. Then in the summer I underwent back surgery for a painfully pinched nerve due to an unusual (of course, for me) cyst. Then I learned that my never-smoker lung cancer had recurred for the second time. This time, they caught it early, so narrow-targeted radiation therapy in August seems to have done the trick to zap that nasty tumor.

Carpe diem! Off to Maui in early October!

Thor and I are not fans of luxury mega-resorts, preferring more low-key neighborhoods and accommodations when possible. Nothing in Hawaii is exactly budget-friendly, but we’ve enjoyed many reasonably-priced trips to Maui when staying in the funky-but-friendly area of Kihei. We rent a condo at Sugar Beach on the north end of “the Strip,” at the start of the nearly-deserted Sugar Beach, for a front-row view of sunsets from the lanai. And we prefer to do our own cooking over needing to go to restaurants.

But, as I said, it’s all about the snorkeling. Every morning for nine days, we drove our rental car to different beaches or coves to find the best snorkeling, depending on the weather/wind/wave-chop that day. Over the years, we’ve found many good sites, usually avoiding crowds by swimming some distance from shore along lava promontories to the coral formations that host fish and our favorites: the sweet Honu sea turtles.

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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s Caribbean suspense novel from Book View Café is ISLANDS, which draws on her experiences working as a scuba divemaster on various islands, and also her research into petroglyphs.  Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com