Oahu and Maui
January 1, 2015 § 5 Comments
Soufflé Days went on hiatus for six months, and all you got are some pictures of Hawaii.
We’ve just returned from Oahu and Maui, where we ate lots of fresh poke, hiked to a 400 ft. waterfall, through bamboo forests, and beaches of all colors—red sand! black sand! white sand! salt and pepper sand!—floated over schools of colorful fish, and settled back with our tropical cocktails.
Right now, in the crisp air of Boston winter—about five minutes outside this morning had me chilled to the bone—the colors of the islands are just a memory. From spicy and shoyu ahi poke over fluffy white rice at Ono Seafood, to crispy and light deep-fried red snapper topped with crunchy, briny papaya salad or drenched in spicy drunken sauce at a small Thai hut in Hana, we ate delightfully well. I never could pass up raw fish and avocado, and so we returned to Ahi Bowl & Pot twice to get our poke fix before leaving Honolulu. Later on, we settled into the back of a roadside farm stand for weekends-only wood-fired pizza night. Spicy tomato sauce, juicy, caramelized pineapple, pulled “pork” jackfruit, and fresh, melty cheese, washed down with a Maui Wine red, out of the red solo cups I had tucked in my purse. Don’t you travel with solo cups too?
In addition to eating, we hiked the Pipiwai Trail, scaled the shoreline to get to the Kaihalulu Red Sand Beach, and sunk our toes into the Hamoa Bay Beach at sunrise. If you’ve never seen an empty Hawaiian beach, or felt the fluffy pools of sand beneath your feet at one of the top five beaches in the world, waking up at sunrise for Hamoa Beach is well worth it.
On Maui, we had a house to ourselves in an unkempt but beautiful, five-acre botanical garden. You could hear the rain pitter-patter or fall down in sheets on the thin roof while we lay in bed. We watched geckos scamper around the windowsill, and ate a whole pineapple for breakfast with large cups of coffee in the covered, outdoor sitting room. We wandered the garden, swatting at mosquitoes, in search of the avocado trees. And then, when it was all over, we piled back in our two-door car, up the winding Hana Highway, past the sugar cane fields, to our flight back to Honolulu.
And ended it all with half a dozen tropical cocktails, beachside. After all, who doesn’t love it when your drink—the “Tropical Itch”—comes with a wooden back scratcher? Seriously. I was surprised too.
Soufflé Days 
Hahahah the tropical itch…that is great. Beautiful pictures 🙂 love you! M
I love tropical climes! And your photos are great! I enjoyed your post thoroughly.
Thank you!!
Mmm, love that poke and all the other amazing Hawaiian food. Miss the food almost as much as the beaches. Can’t wait to go back again some day.
I definitely couldn’t get enough poke! Missed that as soon as we left.