Maui Birthdaycation: Day 7

Hey! Did you miss my post on day 6 of our Maui vacation? If so, check it out here!

Date: Monday January 9th
Itinerary: Coffee + sunrise, breakfast at condo, snorkeling at Charley Young Beach, lunch at condo, beach time at condo, Old Lahaina Luau
Highlight: SWIMMING WITH SEA TURTLES!
Favorite eats: Luau food! I love the taro rolls (they’re the purple ones), crab salad, and especially the pork!
Drink of the day: Pineapple sparkling wine + POG mimosas

Oh man, we’re winding it down you guys! Only a few more Maui posts and we’ll be back to some semi-regularly scheduled programming ;)

January 9th is my birthday eve. (Yes, I celebrate birthday eves, and if you don’t you should!) We started the day with coffee and the sunrise – trying to not think about how there were only a couple more times left we could sip our coffee while looking out at the ocean. We had breakfast at the condo: scrambled eggs with cheese, avocado, rolls and pineapple. Oh, and mimosas using the pineapple sparkling wine we got from Mauiwine + POG juice. They were aaaaamazing. And oh so festive.

We knew that this day we needed to snorkel, because I hadn’t seen a sea turtle yet and that simply would not do. We headed to Charley Young beach because it was pretty close, plus it had a picture of a sea turtle next to it on the map we got with our rented snorkel gear. Promising, right?

Yes. I AM SO GLAD WE CAME HERE! We literally got in the water, swam toward the reef and within the first couple minutes saw a sea turtle. Then another. And another. AND ANOTHER. There were so many! Some were resting at the bottom, some were swimming around, and some were coming up to the surface for a breath. It was so magical. We didn’t see nearly this many last year on our snorkel tour. Swimming with big green sea turtles is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in my life.

After I spent some good bonding time with my new green besties – I left the husband in the water and headed back to our towels on the beach so Merry could use my gear. Special shout out to my husband for being the best sea turtle tour guide. When Merry was done, I used the gear one last time and snorkeled some more with my favorite buddies. We got some gopro footage of our magical morning snorkel – maybe I’ll do a special post and share it :)

After we laid out a bit to try, we headed back to the condo for lunch. We had sandwiches, chips and fruit. I had it in my head that I wanted to write 26 in the sand and get a picture of the ocean washing it away, knowing it probably wouldn’t quite work how I wanted it to. I’m actually really happy with how it turned out.

We took some time to get ready for our plans for the night – a luau! We had bought tickets to the Old Lahaina Luau in December based on all the rave reviews online, and I’m glad we did. It was a great experience. We were greeted with a lei and a mai tai and shown to our seats. We were called family all night, and we sat at a table full of fellow Washingtonians. The food, the show, the weather… everything was great. Plus, we were each sent home with an adorable mini loaf of banana bread. A perfectly Hawaiian way to celebrate my birthday eve.