Getting to know Maui.

I wrote my last post outside a Starbucks (outside, notably, because I bought nothing) while waiting for my bus to the beach. 

My most recent acquaintance, Jesse, embarked at the first stop after the ‘mall’. He laughed at my idea that I could go to the beach, get two buses to Wailuku to pick up the rest of my things from the hostel, then catch two buses back to the airport, in time for my 6.30pm flight. It was 2.45pm. The bus we were on ran every hour and a half. I saw his point.

He suggested I come to a party he and his friends were throwing all weekend at a mansion with dogs and his macaw. I was tempted, especially given that I might miss my flight anyway, but it seems my adventurousness knows some bounds. He told me that rather than sitting on the same bus until it took me back the way I came, I could get off at a pretty beach town and the same bus would loop back through half an hour later.

I fell asleep on the bus from the pretty town to the mall.

Back at the mall, I caught a bus to Wailuku. An old homeless man named Joseph introduced himself. He’d lived all over the world and had just arrived in Maui. I was embarrassed at myself, later, for having looked at him and scanned “homeless, on a bus, probably crazy”. He was as sharp as a tack, and his knitted rainbow tam o shanter was excellent. Like my last friend, he said it was a pity I was leaving today. I’m not sure what he thought would have happened had I been staying.

Belongings packed, I was back on a bus to the mall. A tattooed Californian guy, perhaps 40, picked up something I’d dropped and introduced himself. He was immediately interested to know whether it was true that chivalry is dead in Australian males. We spoke about the differences between Hawai’i and mainland America, and between Hawai’i and Australia. There were too few. When I told him what I was studying he said with a wink that he could tell me all about criminal law, and offered me a free tattoo. I let my excuse for refusing it slip without thinking: “I can’t see myself committing to something for that long.” He thought this was hysterical. Like Jesse and Joseph he said he was sorry I was leaving. He’d have liked to have hung out with an Australian girl.

In short, my day was spent walking down highways, getting public transport back and forth from the same places, and running to catch my plane at the airport.

I really don’t feel like it was wasted.

I may not have swam even once in one of your fabled beaches, Maui, but I like you.