Maui 2004


In early January, 2004 I decided I wanted to go see a Jimmy Buffett concert. So I looked online at his website, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and found he only had 4 concerts scheduled, but they were all out west. I had enough Frequent Flyer Miles on USAirways to get to one of them, but which one. San Francisco would be fun, but I decided if I was only going to get to one, it had to be worthwhile. So I decided to see if tickets were available for the last show of the tour in Maui. I got the ticket, so it I had to figure out where I was staying and what to do while I was there.

mean

While checking things online, I came across a link to the Banana Bungalow Maui Hostel. After asking on Usenet, I decided to give them a try. The cheap rates they offered certainly helped make my decision. It was a good pick, the facilities were not great, but they were good and kept clean. And the tours they offer are quite nice. It is a good place to stay if you are on a budget. And the guests ranged from new high school graduates to married couples in their 50s. A nice cross section, which made for some interesting conversations.

Next up was finding a car to rent. I would have liked aconvertible, but I could not find anything in my price range. Every place I looked online had comparable prices, so it looked like I was going to end up in a compact car. Then I called my local travel agency, Everyday Travel, and asked what they could find. They got me a 2004 Monte Carlo for the same price as the compact car I was finding. Needless to say, I was very happy about this.

mean

While looking for a place to stay, I had asked about things to do on Maui on the Straight Dope Message Board. It is a great place to find out all kinds of information. A couple of people there recommended a guidebook to check out, called Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook. I ordered this from Amazon.com and got it a couple of days later and started reading. This was an excellent investment. It gave a great overview of things to do and see on the island, covering everything from places to stay, to shows, to where to snorkel and scuba. Everything I tried from the book was just like they described, unless something like the weather interfered. And I kept running into people on the island that were also using the book, and having the same kind of experience with it. So if you are going to Maui, get this book.




Recommendations:


Travel Annex Home


Post work on pictures done using JASC Paint Shop Pro, versions 7 & 8. Photo pages created using Album Express 3.2, thumbnails created using Easy Thumbnails, html edited with Notetab Light, all from Fookes Software. These pages were designed for a screen resolution of 800x600 or greater. I tried to keep the compression as low as possible for the large images, so some of them are quite large. If you are on dial-up, they may take a while to download.


Contents copyright © 2004 by Thomas Brincefield. Use of any contents is prohibited unless specific permission is given.