The winds picked up overnight, as predicted, so we didn’t even try to snorkel this morning. Instead, we walked the Beach Walk. We saw a couple of snorkelers, a few swimmers, and even some folks out for a morning row.

We walked a bit past Whaler’s Village – this is a fairly slow week here, so restaurants are doing last-minute maintenance before the hordes arrive for Christmas.

We’d read about Hui No‘eau Visual Arts Center in Hawaiian Airlines’ magazine, and it sounded interesting. It occupies 25 acres which used to be a sugar cane plantation and mill before becoming the Baldwin family estate, Kalaunui. During most of the year, the main building hosts art exhibits; during December, it’s basically a gift shop. We didn’t know that until we got there – luckily, there was one room that still had an exhibition: Grafica: Auwahi.

The main role of the center is to serve as a learning center for the visual arts; they have classes and provide facilities for printmaking, ceramics, and more. The grounds are beautiful and well worth a visit. We started by walking the “Sugar Mill” route, which features the old sugar mill.

There’s artwork scattered over the campus – I liked the way this piece framed the mansion.

We had to prove we were here, of course.

This interesting piece was near the ceramics studio. I call it “Totem Cups”.

There were hibiscus plants all over the grounds, including this unusual Hawaiian White Hibiscus, which Hawaiians used as a mild laxative and made into cordage.

We drove back to the resort with just enough time to catch the shuttle into Lahaina and meet our friends at Warren and Annabelles for dinner, drinks, and magic. The magic started early – somehow, none of us shared a vertical axis here!

And that was before Diane and I had even gotten our drink – the Honeymooner’s Heartthrob.

The show was very entertaining; there were two magicians, John Shyrock and Chris Blackmore. We’d seen John in 2019; he specializes in sleight-of-hand magic, with some comedy thrown in. This was our first chance to see Chris – he was much more generous with the comedy, but the magic was very good, too. I was a little disappointed that the resident ghost, Annabelle, didn’t play music for us; maybe she’ll be back next time.

We spent the day in Upcountry Maui, mostly in Kula. We started at the Kula Botanical Gardens; it was our second trip there. They were badly hit by flooding a year ago; there are still a few areas that aren’t open (like the koi pond), but the garden looked terrific. I’m restraining myself and only posting 17 photos (I could have posted that many hibiscus alone!) – do visit if you come to Maui!

We tore ourselves away from the garden after nearly two hours and drove into Kula proper for lunch at Kula Bistro; it was delicious and fairly reasonably priced for Maui. Recommended.

Our next stop was Ocean Organic Vodka; we were lucky, and they had an opening for a 3pm tasting (we should learn to plan ahead); we got there at 2:53. Plenty of time!

When we visited them a few years ago, they only had vodka and a very new rum; now, they have three rums, a gin, a bourbon-barrel rum, and the vodka. We tried them all.

We returned to the resort and took a walk to burn off a little of the day’s consumption; it was dark and windy and slightly rainy, but it was a lovely evening anyway.