We went to Maui in June this year, lucky enough to have enough frequesnt flyer points to get three of us, my wife and child (4 year old)
We hired a car from one of the big car hire places, expensive but very necessary, had a van that held all windsurfing stuff in the car, two full rigs, paid too much for insurance, but piece of mind is a wonderful thing. maui has different liability rules to the rest of usa, so look into that. Fuel is comparable price to Adelaide, $1.34 a litre when we were there.
We stayed at a place called Mana Aina, up past Paia approx 20 min from the Kanaha, ten minutes from Hookipa and at the end of the street from peahi (Jaws - not working in summer though :() Maina Aina has 4 small units on a property -
[email protected], the hosts Marines and Emanuel are the parents of the two Goya boys Francisco and Lalo, who we met and dribbled windsurfing **** to for hours, sure they have weird impressions of Aussie now. Franciscos daughter, Luna is now my daughters best friend after they babysat her for a day as well, such a generous family. Prices for accomodation were approx $120 per day, highly recommended!
Windsurfing hire, see below
Aloha Dave,
Our regular rate for 10 days standard windsurf package is $395. You may change gear whenever you like selecting from our large rental fleet-- Boards from JP, Naish, Starboard and sails from NeilPryde, Naish and Ezzy.
If you prepay, you will receive a 10% discount off the regular price. Email or phone if you'd like to prepay.
Steve
The Staff at Hawaiian Island Surf & Sport
415 -#A Dairy Rd
Kahului, MAUI, HI 96732
Toll Free: 800-231-6958
local : 808-871-4981
We chabged boards a few times, I tried out a freeride, super x JP, was good, but decided to give a starboard 111 carve a go, IMHO the prefect Kanaha basting board for a fat bastard!
Windsurfing conditions, where do I start? Kanaha was brilliant for windsurfing families with children, excellent facilities, a great kiddies beach, roped off and protected from carve gybing lunnies and just off the wind (trades)
We were in Maui for 12 days, sailed every day except for two, when we prbabaly could have, was marginal. I weigh 95 kgs and used a 4.5 most days, My wife is a lot lighter and she used a 3.5 most days with a JP wave board /freeride
She also had some tuition, said it was the best 90 bucks she had ever spent.
Kanaha has a bad rep after dark, so dont even contemplate it, you can pretty much pick the undesirables in the car park, there tends to be a lot of homeless people around during the day, but we kept to ourselves and spoke mainly to NZers and some Aussies. There are lots of turtles in the water, buy are easly to spot if you are alert, so you can steer around them. Kanaha is meant to be a windsurfingonly spot as well, the kite beach is further down near the harbour. When we were out most days there were over 100 sailors out, awesome experience. Lots of small reefs to muchk around on as well. We did not sail at Sprecks or at Baldwins or Hookipa for that matter, but checked all these places out regularly at the end of each day.
Food is expensive, but good, heaps of health food shops with good sandwich options, you can buy been at servos, which is a plus. The super market in paia is fantastic but as I said expensive, some really good food options.
We did not get to too many touristy spots, drove up the volcano one day, that was excellent, had a look around the leeward side of the island, Kihei and Lahaina, great beaches, good small ridable surf, perfect Malibu riding conditions, also the fastest right in the worls at Maalea, was working, see FWD dvd for pics of this (or cammars blog)...watch out for crabs in the water at Kihei, they hurt!
Check out twin falls, but lock your car and take mosquito repellent.
Good restaurants in Paia, fish market cafe was great on the corner. Jaques in paia was also very good and full of windsurfers after a good session, also a venue for some famous 'Aloha classic' parties over the years.
Pauwela cannery, home of Quatro and Dakine outlets, has a great cafe that does excellent coffee, best in Maui and also great snacks, word of advice though. talk slowly if you are an Aussie as apparetly we are hard to understand.
We are already planning our next holiday there next year, if we did exactly the same thing as we did this year, it would be perfect.
(honeymoon
), with a week in Maui. Does anyone know a good place to stay which is close to a nice beach and sailing spots? We're not fussed about 5 star, just somewhere reasonable.
