Screw seeing sea turtles.. I saw stars!

This entire week has been a series of groundhog’s days; the same trip to the airport earlier in the week & today being mostly a repeat of yesterday.

Woke up at 6:30a (again!) with a slight dry throat. I think all that time spent in an airport really wasn’t good for me. Headed back to Island vintage for my morning coffee and moved up in the queue to Order #7 – I think 7 might be a good number that coincides with today being 11-11. Which also is called “Singles Day” in China. Which is also very apparent in Maui that if you’re single, you should just avoid this entire island. It’s full of couples, weddings, engagements, families and kids crying everywhere.

Went snorkeling this morning and even though I was surrounded by people (strangers really), I still got nervous that something would happen to me out there. This always happens when I go snorkeling – I forget I can breathe through the tube or I swim far off shore and panic that I have to get back. All this anxiety even more intensified because I was out there “alone.” I missed seeing a group of sea turtles and when a woman asked me if I saw them, I said, “no. But that’s OK, I saw some in Mexico.” She responded “but these are American sea turtles.” I told her I preferred the Mexican ones anyhow! I did see some weird translucent worm thing that swam right up to my face. That thing was freaky as I could see through it and it’s insides. The ocean is wild.

After snorkeling, I went back to my room to change and figured I should try this MonkeyPod restaurant that 3 different people told me about. Waited in line again (seems to be par for the tourist trap) and was seated at the bar. MonkeyPod is known for their Mai Tai’s and I had 2 just to make sure I was making a sound judgment on their goodness. Definitely recommend but beware, they are STRONG!! And the food was muuuuuuch better than what I could get at my hotel.

The weather is all over the place today – much like my mood apparently. It was blazing hot and I got a nice tan going on. And just like that, clouds & wind came in to make it cooler. I booked a “Night of Astronomy” over at a different hotel and walked over there hoping the clouds would clear up enough to be able to see anything. The telescopes set up on the 9th floor roof of the Hyatt were large and there were 3 of them! I think the coolest thing about Hawaii was the stargazing and seeing stars that you can’t see from the Mainland. The tour of the skies even included souvenir photos. BEST part of this trip. The astronomy nerd in me is super happy.