Maui Day 4....Kauai Day ???

When we woke up this morning, we were looking forward to going out on the outrigger at the hotel, but also felt a sense of dread over having to schlep our luggage back to the airport knowing that it probably wouldn't arrive in Kauai with us. On top of that, we really enjoyed the friendliness of the staff at the Four Seasons. Not only did they make us feel welcomed, but it felt like they were glad we had come to stay with them. So we had a dilemma: should we go on the outrigger, race back to our room, load up the car, wrestle with the luggage, deal with dropping off and picking up rental cars at the airports on both ends, yada, yada, yada......or do we try to get things rearranged so we can stay right where we were in Maui? Hmmmm...... Maui or Kauai? Kauai or Maui?

We decided that we would have a go at trying to stay put in Maui. We called our travel agent who told us what the price difference would be for our hotel. We thought it would be worth it, but only if she could get the airline issue taken care of . She called us back and said that on our last day, we would still have to fly to Kauai, then back to Maui, then to Honolulu then to San Diego. WHAT??? That didn't make sense! It seems that Inter Island Air wasn't willing to cut out the Maui to Kauai leg of the trip; it was either do that or pay an additional twelve hundred dollars for changing our air trip plans. You have got to be kidding! So we told her to forget making the changes, we're not about about to pay through the nose for not going to Kauai, that we would go ahead to Kauai as planned. She informed us that it was too late, she had cancelled our Kauai hotel reservations, set up our reservations to stay at the Four Seasons and switched the car rentals. Crap!!!! It felt like she had us over a barrel! K was very diplomatic while talking with the travel agent so the agent agreed that she would continue working out the flight issues.

We decided that it was time to get on with our day and vacation and, if need be, deal with fighting this after our trip. We weren't about to let this spoil the rest of our time. So it was off to the beach for our out rigger lesson. Only two hotels in all of Hawaii are licensed to provide out rigger services and ours was one of them. What an amazing experience! While out on the water, we got to see coral growing on the lava flow below us. We also saw 4 sea turtles and heard a story about how ancient Hawaiians used female sea turtles for navigation on long trips. We enjoyed it so much that we signed up to go out again tomorrow. And guess what.......we didn't flip the boat even one time!

When we got back on the beach, our travel agent called and gave us the good news. Hawaiian Air convinced Inter Island Air to drop that leg of the trip for us and charge just the trip cancellation penalty of $250 instead of the whole twelve hundred. Phew! Much, much better.

So here we are in Maui, eating, lounging, shopping and getting pampered some more. Oh yeah, speaking of shopping, while out on today's shopping trip we found a Starbucks. Yup...it's official...Maui has Starbucks which, to us, makes it a top ten desirable place to live! Here's a picture of the outrigger we went out on today. Tomorrow we will get pictures of us actually out on the water (yep, they have a WATERPROOF bag to put our camera in).

And of course, we found one of only two Starbucks on the whole island! Life is good!!!

P.S. For all of you who had a good laugh about yesterday's adventures, know that we have laughed so hard that we nearly wet ourselves dozens of times today as we think back about how hilarious the whole fiasco must have looked to any onlookers. And Kitty, yes, our rescuer actually kept a straight face during all of it, but how he did that is beyond us! We can just imagine the good laugh he had once his back was turned and he paddled away. We still can't stop laughing!