mindless ramblings

Christmas Day! We meant it to be fairly relaxing and it was. We got ready in time for a quick lunch nearby at this local food place called Da Kitchen. Esther tried the Honolulu-style fried noodles, while I got some monster special with kalua pork and chicken katsu. I found the noodles to be quite bland. It’s not like the fried noodles in Chinese food, but more like boiled noodles with seasoning. I suppose it is good if you want some light food. The special was huge! The pork or chicken alone would have been enough for a meal by itself. The pork was a little on the salty side, but I thought the chicken was quite good. This is a cheap and good place if you are hungry and need to get full with little regard for your health.

Next up was a visit to the Iao Valley in central Maui. Unfortunately, as we made our way into the valley, it started to rain. Luckily it was just a slight drizzle and actually quite refreshing. The raindrops were so small it almost felt like walking through a fine mist of water, pretty good for the tropical heat! The main attraction of the valley is the Iao Needle, a phallic object that rises 1200ft from the valley floor. There is a little path that winds up a hill so you get a nice view of the Needle, but having seen Haleakala the day before, this was just slightly underwhelming to me.

The needle was nothing special to me, but the rest of the little park was cool. The park has had all “alien” vegetation removed, leaving only the original plant life and whatever the first Hawai’ians brought with them. You see taro, bananas, sugar cane and other traditional foods that they used to cultivate right there in the valley. I don’t think the Iao Valley is a absolute must-see attraction, but it is a very nice change from the drier beach side of the island.

On our way back to Kihei, we stopped by the Snorkel Bob’s next to our hotel and grabbed a boogie board for the day for around $6. The weather was actually a little cloudy, which was a slight disappointment as we were hoping for some serious sun to get a serious tan. By extension of the cloudy weather, the water was actually quite chilly! it was cold enough that I couldn’t just hop in and had to ease myself in. Once you get inside the water it is quite fine though, it was just the initial shock. So… boogie boarding is quite fun! It takes a while to learn when to jump in with the wave, but once you pick it up, it is pretty easy. Definitely very satisfyign you catch the wave right and ride it all the way into shore. I just wish the waves were slightly bigger that day.

One of the restaurants that I had been wanting to try was Ruth’s Chris Steak House. The main attraction of Ruth’s Chris is the fact that they prepare their steaks at a sizzling 1500 °F, and then serve it on plates that are 500 °F. It sounded gimmicky to me, but it was worth a try. We started with some jumbo sea scallops which were indeed jumbo in size. They were pretty tasty too! As for the steaks, I chose a ribeye medium-rare plus, while Esther had a filet done medium-rare. They were accompanied by 2 sides (which cost extra BTW) of a fully loaded baked potato and some sauteed mushrooms.

My steak was really quite good, with plenty of marbling and lots of flavour. We thought Esther’s filet was slightly undercooked and the middle was a little too rare. One thing that was common to both steaks was that when the plates cooled, they had a rapidly congealing pool of fat accumulating at the bottom, which was slightly disturbing when you think about it. The potato was very nice, tender and full of condiments. The mushrooms were… well mushrooms. Hard to screw that one up. Including a glass of wine and a lava flow (not as good as the one at the lu’au), the bill came up to over USD$100. Definitely our most expensive meal of the vacation. Would I go back? I don’t think so, the steak felt overpriced and (still) gimmicky when all was said and done. I’m pretty sure I can find equivalent steak at lower prices locally, but I suppose when you’re on vacation, you tend to splurge a little. No regrets for trying it.

With the night drawing to a close, we only had a one full day left to do whatever we had to do. We felt pretty satisfied though, with everything that we had wanted to see completed. The final day would be just another relaxing trip to wherever we wanted to go… except for our final activity which was to come at night!