Day 246 of Project 365

Shoot! I didn't even realize until today (September 6th) that I didn't take a single picture on the day we left Maui, not even with the iPhone! Luckily for me, my friend Joi was on top of things and so I stole a picture from her facebook album as my picture of the day. Under normal circumstances, a picture of my backside would not make the cut in my Project 365, but this photo has another fun travel story to accompany it and seeing as I didn't have any other options to choose from, well, what you see is what you get!

So you all read about our travel mishaps adventures on our way over here, right? If not, you can click here for the full story. Anyway, after spending about $75 on shuttle service to get to our condo when we arrived (obviously it had originally been much less but since we arrived on separate airplanes at different times, we ended up having to pay for two shuttle trips instead of just one) we decided to give the bus a try for our trip back to the airport. We had already taken the bus the day before to our snorkeling trip, and Joi and taken the bus once before that as well so we felt pretty confident that it would be a reliable way to get to the airport and MUCH less expensive ($2.00 per person and Jenica rode free)! So, we checked and double checked the schedule and planned to take the 9:37am bus, which would require us to change one time before arriving at the airport AT LEAST 2 hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. Everything started out going really smoothly. We got to the bus stop (which was less than a block from our condo) in plenty of time and had no problems boarding the first bus that would take us to Kahului. Rob confirmed with the bus driver twice that we were on the right bus to get to the airport (well, the stop where we would change buses to the airport one) and we made it safe and sound to the "Salvation Army" stop, where we were dropped off to wait for bus #2. Begin frustration! Bus #2 arrives and the bus driver will not let us on because we have too many bags! What?!! First of all, the last driver said nothing about the number of bags we had. In fact, there was a nice little compartment up front that fit our suitcase perfectly, keeping it out of the way of passengers. Second of all, why would a bus even go to the airport if you are not allowed to take your luggage with you! The whole thing seemed highly suspicious to all three of us, but the bottom line was that we were not allowed to get on the bus. So, the nice lady driving the bus (said in a completely sarcastic tone) left us standing on the side of the road... baby and all... a good 45 minute walk from the airport in a town that was completely unfamiliar to us. I'm not going to lie, I had a few moments of panic about what we were going to do, but thankfully we have these handy dandy things called iPhones that totally saved the day! We just typed "taxi" into Google maps and started calling local companies until we found one that we could a.) understand, and b.) could come pick us and all our luggage up in the next 10 minutes and get us to the airport. Fortunately this little mishap only cost us about $10 more than the bus would have and we still made it in plenty of time to check our luggage and ALL get on the same flight home. . And that is how our vacation ended!