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Maui, Hawaiian Islands, December 24, 2006 - February 25, 2007     by Dagmar  

Our X-mas present for this year: a vacation on Maui, Hawaiian Islands. We were looking forward to come back to the place where we used to live for 5 years and where we left May 2005, almost 2 years ago. We were so excited to see all our friends again. So we left our boat LUNA in the Town Basin Marina in Whangarei/New Zealand and boarded a plane on the evening of December 24th. We were flying against the dateline, so we were arriving on Kahului airport on the 24th around midday, greeted by our friends Ivo and Belinda with kids Kane and Ben and Marilee with Taysia. Soleil was really excited to see one of her friends at the airport. We spent X-mas and New Years Eve as well at Ivo and Belinda's house. It was so great to come back and to catch up with all our friends right there were we left almost 2 years ago.

The first week we stayed with Uli and Don in Sprecks and from then on with Jeff and Remy on Stable Rd. Thank you so much for your hospitality. We really enjoyed to stay with friends. Thanks to Patch, Jeff and Remy's dog, for joining me on my morning runs to Baby Beach.

So we were right in time to celebrate some birthdays, Belinda's on January 2nd, same day as my Mom, and Taysia's birthday on January 6.

I continued to home school Soleil. But we made sure that she could catch up a lot with her friends in the afternoons. Soleil could join for a Hip Hop class with Sunny at Carden Academy, Art Class with Eva to design a kids sail for Hotsails Maui,

and swim team at the YMCA with coach Marie.

On January 26 Chris, Amy's Mom, organized a birthday party for Soleil. Actually Soleil's birthday is on September 21, but she said that her friends missed already two of her birthdays, so she will have an extra one on Maui now. Soleil was so excited. It was a sleepover party as well. The girls styled themselves, did a fashion show and we adults played Poker. 

We had lots of fun on the water, too, surfing, windsurfing, even with a long board, standup paddling....

...and on the beach too, even with a crab wearing a seaweed wig and looking like Bob Marley....

The Ridge Trail in the West Maui Mountains as well as ...

the hike in the Bamboo Forest near Twin Falls,

a trip around West Maui, to the Blowhole, Honolua Bay and then to the Banyan Tree in Lahaina...

and the road to Hana...driving curve after curve, over almost a hundred year old bridges, seeing waterfalls just next to the road...

...walking the trail thru the bamboo forest to reach the 400ft high Waimoku Falls, are always highlights for us.

We could catch up with a lot of our friends. So did Soleil. She could even do a PowerPoint Presentation of our travels at the 3rd Grade class of Miss Leval at Carden Academy.

But after 2 month we had to leave again, but very certain this time that we will see everybody again in Fall 2008. So we had some nice gatherings with friends at the end of our vacation....

...to say goodbye on February 25th. Thank you very much to all our friends. We had a great time on Maui and can't wait to come back. We left thru Auckland/NZ to Perth in Australia to stay there for 3 weeks to travel along the Western Australian coast. We will be back in New Zealand on March 22nd to continue our journey around the world.

Last modified: September 02, 2008