Today was a travel day. We left the Westin Nanea on Maui about 8:45am and arrived at the Marriott Waikoloa Beach on Hawai’i about 1:30pm – our room was ready, which was a nice surprise.

We stopped by the Island Gourmet Market (which is an ABC store with pretensions) in Queen’s Marketplace (one of the two large outdoor malls within a five minute walk of the hotel) and picked up some pre-made salads for a light lunch – they weren’t half-bad. Then we drove ten minutes to the closest real grocery store to pick up the breakfast essentials that Island Gourmet didn’t have.

We had dinner at the Lava Lava Beach Club down the beach from the hotel – they have tables right in the sand, but we would have had to wait a while to get one, so we took a table on the concrete floor. We both had fish – Diane went for seared ahi, while I had macadamia nut crusted mahi-mahi. Much better than our lunchtime salads, that’s for sure! And foofy drinks and ice cream sandwiches didn’t hurt, either.

The sun set while we were having dinner; it was a clear evening, so the sky didn’t get very colorful, but it still made for a nice walk back to the hotel.

Today, we decided to hike the Kapalua Coastal Trail near the Ritz-Carlton hotel, fifteen minutes from Nanea. It’s 3.5 miles round trip and is rated easy…right up our alley!

We found parking fairly easily, but we got distracted even before we saw the trail itself. Maui Revealed mentioned the Dragon’s Teeth Trail as a nice short addition to the hike, and we were parked mere meters from the trailhead…how could we resist?

It didn’t take very long to reach Dragon’s Teeth, and it was gorgeous.

The book didn’t mention the Kapalua Labyrinth, but one of the other visitors at Dragon’s Teeth mentioned it. We walked to the center on the path, then we took a shortcut out.

We had lunch at the Ritz-Carlton’s Burger Shack on the beach. The food was good, and the Kona Royal milkshake was killer. It wasn’t a good day for being in the water, though.

We finally started hiking the Coastal Trail a mere three hours after parking our car. It was great…but somewhere along the way, we accidentally veered off the trail, which gave us a better view of the ocean and of the point at Namalu Bay.

We found our way back to the trail eventually and hiked it to the Montage at Kapalua Bay, where we saw sea turtles for the first time on this trip.

This evening, we walked down the Beachwalk for the last time and had dinner at Monkeypod Kitchen at Whalers Village before walking back to our room and packing our suitcases.