Nirvana

Post-diving, we headed over to our one night of hotel gloriousness on the island of Lanai.

I had never been, but I knew Lanai was super-small. Actually, the small section I did see had no chain anything. Half of the people on the boat (it's a 1 hour ride) had just come from Costco, and were stocked up with everything from toilet paper to dog food. My first impression of the island: scrubby. Seriously, there is like hardly any vegetation there, until you near a resort area, and then due to obscene watering, it looks like an oasis.


We were staying at the the Four Seasons. They had two hotels - one up in mountains, and one on the beach. We were staying at the one up in the mountains. They offer free shuttle to/from/and between the two resorts, and we were happily on our way to the top.


You scuba people are probably thinking, 'wait, up? Didn't you just do a two tank dive 4 hours ago? Won't your bodies explode or something from all that excess nitrogen?'


Which became our exact thoughts about 1/4 of the way there. I kept waiting to be struck by some kind of pain, but you know how it is when you suddenly try to become uber-aware of your body - you notice all kinds of things that are normal, but since you've never paid attention to them before, they suddenly become 'symptoms'. Brother.

So, we called the concierge and explained the issue. You can tell it was a nice place, because he tried to seem concerned instead of laughing at our touristy-boneheadedness. He put us on hold while they contacted the dive master at the beach resort. After a long 5 minutes, which is like an hour in body-monitoring time, he came back on and told me that the divemaster said we should be fine, since we were only like 2000 ft up. This was good news, because by the time we got this answer, we were practically there anyway. So yay, no death.

But we were concerned for a while there.

Anyway we arrived, and went from scrubby camper to royalty. Perhaps it was just so different than the rest of our trip, the experience was amplified, but I don't think so. This place was heaven, perfect, and all-around PIMP, and it was all ours for 24 hours.

Entry Drive

Suddenly, every bellhop had memorized my name, and was constantly calling our to me 'Mrs. Dyer!'' to see if I ever needed anything. It kind of made me uncomfortable, to tell you the truth. They all act like you've cured cancer or something. The weirdest part was that everyone seemed so genuinely happy to be waiting on you hand and foot. Perhaps the hotel jobs are really great to have on that island - I don't know. But I felt like I had my own empire or something. If we needed anything, someone was always there, being helpful to the point of ridiculousness.


Just wait until I tell you about the beach resort.

The hotel front

So, it was lovely. We checked in and went to our room to store our tent. (Ha) Here's the view from our room:

One of the reasons I loved it so much was that it looked nothing like Hawaii. It actually felt like a vacation. It was cool, and there were no palm trees, no beach.



Old church/schoolhouse

Well, very few palm trees, anyway. It definitely had a clubhouse/hunting lodge for The Rich vibe. I saw there was a 'Music Room' and I proceeded to force myself and my bad playing on some unfortunate employees in the next room. As a gesture of apology, David went to get a beer, and I discovered their cocktail snacks menu.


There was popcorn.

Not just any popcorn, truffle Parmesan something-er-other popcorn. You know you're at a nice place when they try to put popcorn on something that costs $35. It's avaunt-guarde! How lucky you are! Try not to think that you can get 5 cups of this for $2.50 at home. This is gourmet.

Needless to say, I really wanted some.

Ponies!

David got his beer, and we started to wander the grounds. I spotted horses, so away we went. it was really beautiful in the hazy afternoon light, and David and I spent a while trying to get some horses to wander our way in vain. I noticed at wayyy on the other side of the pasture there was a horse grazing by the fence line. David decided that he did not want to go schlepping through the fields with a glass mug, so we started up the tree-lined drive to the hotel. We were almost there when someone came out and offered to take David's empty glass for him. I feel kind of weird making people bus my dirty things, but luckily David is normal, so we handed it over and headed out.

Barn in the distance

It was nice to just walk and talk, and when we got to the fence line, we discovered that the horse was still there, and friendly. I got some of my favorite pictures of David - David and horses. Perfect for me. I might photoshop Lily in for the trifecta of greatness. But probably not.

David + Horses = Perfect

So we went back to the hotel, and wandered some more. There really was a lot of wandering available. For the first time, I was at a hotel that I didn't mind not leaving.

Walk back to our room


Walkway connecting the rooms to the main area

The back pond/gardens

The back porch had lounge chairs set around individual fire pits! Heaven.



View of the barn from the front porch



Perfect sunset-viewing spot

The only reason David and I could stay at this great place is because they have an amazing rate for locals. If you have a Hawaii driver's license, you get like 75% off or something. It's nuts. We were just coming to the realization that we never wanted to leave, and we were sad we could not afford to come back any time soon. I was about to take a picture of David when I mentioned, 'You know, if we keep our drivers license, we could probably still get the discount.'



I don't know if you can see his face, but this is David's Pure Joy face. He was so happy.



We took maybe a million pictures of this plant. The real flowers look cool because they hang down like a huge cluster of grapes, but this is the picture that turned out the best. I feel the need to include it, because we were there, passing the camera back and forth, for like 20 minutes, and people kept looking at us like we were crazy. Of course, we were crouched in the plant bed of 5 star resort, so maybe we were.


Then, I got a fancy dinner. SO GOOD. Of course, steak was involved. Dessert too - David went all out. David had some kind of side dish that was ridiculously addictive, but I don't remember what it was, just that I ate more than my alotted half.


They had enormous fireplaces in the large room alongside the dining area, populated with plush couches and armchairs. The poor piano I had subjected myself to earlier was out, and someone who could actually play was doing something wonderful on it. Several people had chosen to be served dinner while sitting in armchairs around the fire, and I could see several small children being brought large mugs of hot chocolate with huge clouds of what were definitely homemade marshmallows floating in them. I mentally added it to my To Do list for later.


But, I was determined to enjoy my first fire in 1 1/2 years immediately. It was heaven.

<Insert Heavenly Choir Here>

After this, we decided NOT to go to bed at 7 pm! I know! Crazy! There was a game room (of course there was a game room) so we whiled away the hours in a Tour de Room Championship.




Shuffleboard



David and I enjoyed this one the most, probably because we both sucked, and therefore were pretty evenly matched. We spent most of our time here. David reminds me of my dad - he will always take the punk shot if he thinks he could make it. Similarly, my dad spanked us all mercilessly at Clue when we were children. Which, I will probably do to my kids. Its a nice reminder of who's really the boss.



Pool


Yes, I used to have one. Yes, I truly suck at this. David destroyed me.



Foosball

I also had a foosball table. My father taught me well, and because he never just let me win, it was a real joy and achievement when I beat him for the first time. I proceeded to demasculate David here.

Several times.

Ah hahaha! Victory is mine.

There was also a long line of tables with various classical games set up - we played backgammon, but I didn't take any pics because backgammon - not exactly thrilling. I did kick some ass though.

Finally beat, we went to bed. We had things to do in the morning! Although, we weren't quite sure what. We spent a luxurious 30 minutes in a bed with a comforter, watching TV. It was glorious.

The next morning, I took yet another shower - I was so happy about having a bathroom. Words can't describe. Hot water - it was the best part of the vacation. Thank goodness David didn't have a hold of the camera when I entered our room - I managed to wait until the bellhop left before I ran in there an started hugging various common bathroom items, such as the sink and shower head.

After that, we headed down to breakfast, which overlooked the back area of the resort. It was kind of pretty. (sarasm)

As I was looking at this, I was eating breakfast nirvana. I was having essentially what was a plate-sized lobster hash brown topped with two poached eggs and a river of creamy hollandiase sauce. Sweet lord. I almost wouldn't share. David had something equally astounding, but I don't remember what because it is all lost in my lobster-hollandiase haze. I didn't need to eat for the rest of the day.

After breakfast - more wandering. The back is a pretty, zen area.

There is a little green house all lone on the hill - inside it is stuffed with a zillion different kinds of orchids. Corene, you would have loved it. I thought of you.

Orchids

Beside the lake there was a bamboo forest with random buddas in it. David did some communing, but could not covert this little guy.

After our walk around the lake, we grabbed some clubs and hit up the professional putting green. Aka, miniature golf! haha!

Fore!

We had a really good time. David was surprised about how well I did. Heck, I was surprised. I even got a hole in one once. Decorum out the window, I celebrated. The two other players were looking at me over their bifocals and shoulder sweaters. Whatever. We had more fun.

After this, we were considering indulging in another rich-person pastime they offered, croquet. Seriously, there were several nice croquet fields set up, ready to play on. But, alas, we needed to get packed up, becuase we wanted to hit up the beach at the other resort before we had to head back to Maui to catch our flight.

Look - a reading nook!! Love it. I read for a bit while I waited for David to get packed.

Which wasn't happening because David was busy....

Jumping on the bed.

Eventually we did get out of there, and headed down to the beach, which looked something like this:

Although, to get to the actual beach, you had to walk for a pretty long time. It was worth it, and becuase of this, it wasn't too crowded.

We picked a spot away from most people, and started to set up. The cabana guy had followed us out, and laid special towels down that hooked over the chairs so they wouldn't move while you were laying on them. Sweet.

There was a pod of dolphins in the bay, so David set out to go swim with them. I stayed on the beach, because we weren't suposed to go bother the dolphins, and I didn't want it to be too obvious that we were blantantly ignoring this fact. There were arleady a few yahoos out there, anyway. What's one more?

By the way, it's attitudes like that this that make recycling so ineffective.

Anyway, David's out swimming, and I'm in my usual mo, which is cozying up to a book. I happened to glace up and I was turning a page, and noticed this poor shmuck in a polo shirt schlepping out to us. I squinted, trying to see what he was carrying. It looked like... a pitcher? Yes, it was. This poor bastard walked like half a mile to see if I wanted some lemonade, and to offer some suntan lotion in case I had forgotten mine. I was kind of dumbfounded, but I managed to close my trap and take the lemonde, becuase that is just awesome. He turned around and headed back to what I hope was the cool shady place from whence he came. Crazy. Later I noticed this poor guy laboring under a huge waiter's tray to bring a family of 5 their ordered lunches up from the clubhouse. Brutal.

I started getting hot and wanted to cool off, but not in the ocean, since I woudn't be able to take a shower until we got back. So, we headed up to the pool.

Where the REAL pampering began.

I hadn't been down long when someone started coming around with cool towels for our heads. I figured, what they hey, so I took one. Although it's only refreshing for about 10 seonds, so I'm not sure it's worth the bother.

Perhaps 15 mintes later, a repetative sound broke through my reading haze. Something was being repeated with the same polite inflection over and over, and I looked up to see what I had correctly guess was the next guest amenity. I had to turn a loud laugh into a cough when I saw what was going on.

Some nice pool employee was offereing to spray you in the face with some EVIAN. I managed to pass with a straight face, because this was this poor guy's job, and laughing is Not Nice. Although it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. But I wonder if sometimes after a shift he dreams of upturning our little umbrella-filled drinks all over our desinger swimsuits. He probably does. I would.

David and I played in the water for a bit, and when we got out someone was coming around giving out samples of some kind of coconut ice cream with macadamia honey glaze. It was good, and I enjoyed it immensely. What I did not enjoy was the bees, who zoned in on our finished sample cups. I don't like bees, and David freaks out over anything with a stinger, so I picked up the cups and went looking for a trash can.

I was looking for quite some time. Where were they? I was perplexed. I must have been showing on my face, becuase a hotel employee came over, and asked me if he could help me. I explained that the cup was drawing bees, and we just wanted to be rid of it. You would have thought that I had just told him I had a gun and was going to shoot up the joint. A look of pure horror crossed his face, and then he started apologizing for the inconveince. I was like, it's no big deal - I just need a trash can. Turns out, there aren't any. All trash is to be taken away by the employees, because us guest people have better things to do, apparently.

Such as getting pedicures. One lady was laying down on her chair by the pool, and this woman came out with a portable pedicure kit. Gave it to her right there by the pool. That was a first.

This was a new world for me. It is soley based on having people at your beck and call to make you feel important. And even though I know it's shallow, it kind of does. I can see if a person was surrounded by this all the time how their perceptions would get a little warped. It was interesting.

Eventually David and I had to leave, and leave we did. But it was just a short trip back to a different kind of paradise.