Maui – Rashaan Alexis Meneses

December 18, 2010February 14, 2012

Holiday Shopping with Head, Heart, and Hands

Still scrambling for holiday gifts? Tis the season to celebrate family, friends and community by supporting local businesses. Consider shopping with head, heart, and hands with some of these favorite local purveyors:

BOOKS

Anvil Publishing – Just released Angelica’s Daughter, “A Dugtungan Novel, a collaborative work written by five established Filipino and Filipino American women writers. The five authors came from different countries during the creation of the novel: Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and Veronica Montes lived in California; Susan Evangelista and Erma Cuizon were in the Philippines, and Nadine Sarreal was in Singapore.” This publisher has a wide range of Pin@y literary selections that should be in every savvy reader’s library.

Continue reading “Holiday Shopping with Head, Heart, and Hands”

July 17, 2010July 18, 2010

Hana Highway I, Maui, July 2010

The day after Fourth of July was smoky. The evening passed with the blare of sirens startling us, and we woke to smell, hear, and read about dozens of fires that blazed through the island. Our room was heavy with the scent of burning cane, but we stuck to our schedule and headed out to Hana. Along the infamous Hana Highway, a four-hour drive full of hairpin, blind turns, and one-lane bridges, from Lahaina, we stopped for one of Maui’s famous fish tacos, made with flour tortillas, fresh mahi mahi, black beans, and cabbage. Six miles before Hana, on the twisty turn-y road, at Nahiku, we had a taste of coconut candy: “hand-sliced coconut, slow baked in cane.” Delicious. The coconut candy vendor showed us his vintage bottle collection, which included an array of glass Clorox bottles dated before World War II, shaped like our plastic bleach bottles today but in beautiful green and root beer brown colors.

Hana thrusts you right into the thick of lush green jungles whereas the western side tends to be barren and dry. See for yourself.

The Hawaiians are known to have buried their dead high up in the hills of Hana.

The Hana Highway Adventure continues with more pictures to come.

July 11, 2010July 11, 2010

Maui, July 2010, Part I

Blessed with a honeymoon in Maui, we first checked into our lodging at the Maui Ocean Club in Lahaina, taking in the vistas from the wraparound balcony on the top floor with views of Ka’anapali Beach. The next day we hit Kapalua Beach and took a quick afternoon hike on the Kapalua Coastal Trail then followed up with a pool stop at our accommodation back in Lahaina.

The first four pictures are actually from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, visited a week before, June 23, 2010, though I wish I could say they were taken on a snorkeling-without-a-snorkel trip.