Back to Maui

On Friday, June 14th, we returned to Ka'anapali, Maui to finish out our Hawaiian vacation. Our second hotel was the Hyatt Regency which was very nice. Upon our arrival, they greeted us with our first floral leis!

Perhaps the biggest highlight for Christopher was the fact that the lobby of the Hyatt had a little pond which eight penguins called their home. As you can imagine, this was one of Chris' favorite parts of this whole Hawaii trip. They were endangered black footed penguins and, of course, we visited them every single time we went down to the pool, to eat, to the beach, to the car, etc.

If you happened to be around the penguins at 9:30 in the morning, you could watch them being fed their daily ration of fish! The hotel was great and we used the rest of our vacation time to relax and be in the water. Here is the view from our hotel room:

There was a tree directly in front of our deck that had a pair of birds nesting in it. (Not sure what the birds were; something black and native to Hawaii). When we had some down time, we would just watch out the window and check out the pair taking turns finding food, building their nest and sleeping... In the first picture you might notice a white boat in the water. The first full day at this hotel, there was a rowing rigatta in Lahaina Bay. It was cool to watch the boats line up and take off! Another view from our room was of the hotel's nightly luau called "Drums of the Pacific." It would start right around Christopher's bedtime but our little man-who-will-sleep-anywhere drifted off to sleep with the sound of said drums dancing in his head! Here is kind of what we could see of the luau:

On our last night at the hotel we got all dressed up and had a nice dinner at Sonz, a semi-outdoor restaurant with a view of a pond filled with swans, ducks, and flamingos.

And speaking of ducks, Christopher insisted that I tell you all this story... As we were enjoying a luxurious meal in such a beautiful setting, there was an overly-friendly duck who decided that he wanted to see who was in a generous mood this particular evening. After having enough of being harassed by a swan, the duck hopped out of the water and proceeded to visit each of the tables in the restaurant. It was very reminiscent of a dog looking for table scraps because he would walk up to a table (literally a foot away from each person) and look directly up as if to ask, "Um, so what do you have to share with me today?" He was so cute. We watched him for awhile and as he was walking away from our table, he proceeded to poop on the nice carpeted floor. Chris, of course, thought this was utterly hilarious (as did we)! When we told our waiter about it, he said, "Oh, he has done that the past three nights."