Check out Lobo on YOU TUBE:
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
www .youtube.com/user/travelswithlobo
**********************************************************

So What Will "$150 a Day" Get You in Maui?

The short answer is - "not much".

We procured all of our accommodations in the Hawaiian Islands in the neighbourhood of just over $100 per day, with one exception.

That exception was on the island of Maui.

If you did not read blog No. 77: Hawaii - Preparing for the Trip, let me point out that we made this trip between December 16, 2007 and January 12, 2008.

All of our reservations were made via Internet during the last week of October 2007.

At that time, the cheapest accommodations we could find on the whole island of Maui was at the Hale Maui Apartment/Hotel located in Honokaui, 8 miles north of Lahaina.

The price of that apartment hotel was $150, a full $50 more than anywhere else in the Hawaiian Islands .

The higher price is simply a reflection of several factors:
- Maui is the most popular of the Hawaiian Islands
- it is billed as the most beautiful island in the world by some
- Christmas is the worst time to visit the Hawaiian Islands from the standpoint of accommodations price
- there is a short supply of reasonably priced accommodations
- Maui is world renowned

In the case of the Hale Maui, we only had one guarantee of quality: we knew that the owner was of Swiss origin. That meant that the accommodations might be a lot of things but at least it would be orderly and clean.

That is how we found it: orderly and clean.

Barbara was thrilled with it.

I was less than thrilled. I found it reflected another Swiss trait - thriftiness. It seemed to me that the owner was trying to get as much out of it as possible without spending a nickel more to make it look anything more than acceptable .

The furniture all seemed to have been bought on the second-hand market or else it was very old. The large sliding patio doors had been rattling in the breeze for the last thirty years and other than stuffing toilet paper into the spaces to prevent the rattling, no improvements had ever been made.

The scrub pad by the sink looked like something that should have been thrown away years ago. I guess all the guests played the same game, buy a new one, use it, take it with you and leave the "old" one.

There was no swimming pool. However the beach was 50 yards away.

Worst of all, at that price, there was no air conditioning. Fortunately it was not hot enough that air conditioning was necessary but what about the visitors in the summer time. Like I said, it would cost money and that is contrary to being "thrifty".

Since this was the cheapest accommodations on the whole island we could find (yes, I am "thrifty" as well), we stayed here for our entire six day stay . I don't mean "stayed" in a literal sense since our biggest fear is to stay in the same place for too long. From our base at the Hale Maui we explored a different part of this beautiful island every day.

Visiting the nearby resorts showed us how the other side lives.

Especially beautiful was the Kaanapali Beach Club Resort. It is a time share, as they all are and while I went to the huge lobby for the wireless internet, I was surrounded by a large number of tables some of which were occupied by persons engaged in some heavy duty arm twisting.

I observed the ritual of tourists trading an hour of scuba diving or two hours of overeating at a luau for an hour of putting up with a time share presentation. This is free enterprise at its best.

You scratch my back and I will scratch yours, with both sides gaining a benefit from the transaction. The only problem is that sometimes, like 20% of the time, the fish bite and sign a contract for a time share contract .

For that privilege you can spend a week or two at a time share like the Kaanapali Beach club or many others which form part of the time share network. I have yet to hear anything really positive about time share units. Furthermore the many outlets throughout Hawaii which sell "steeply" discounted time share units speak of many owners who had to dump their units at discount prices in the hopes of reselling them.

I also had to think that the high pressure time share sales pitch must be a great place for a sales person to hone their selling skills. It must a brutal business in the sense that the success or failure of a sales person is so self-evident. There is no hiding or fudging the figures. You either make a sale or you don't. Like New York, in time share, if you can make it here as a sales person, you can make it anywhere.

Coming Soon:

Kapalua and the PGA Mercedes Open