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This morning we found a little coffee shop for breakfast before driving on to Lahaina Town which we had bypassed previously. Lahaina is a bustling seaside village... Very touristy but historic as well. We bought tickets for the Atlantis Submarine, and as there was a couple of hours to kill before our booking time, we had a look through the shops and had some lunch at a pierside inn.
At 12:30 we made our way to Slip 18 where we joined the submarine group. We were taken out a few miles on a launch and met up with the sub's surface support vessel which looked like a little tug boat. We stood off a short distance and witnessed the sub surfacing.... first appearing as a light blue shape under the water and then as a glistening white vessel when it bobbed to the surface.
Then followed a highly efficient boarding process as the sub was sandwiched between the two surface vessels, and the previous group of passengers was disembarked into the stern of our boat while we all had to squeeze up forward.
Once aboard and seated in front of the viewing windows, we descended quickly to a depth of 100 feet and began a slow pass over the bottom. The coral was a little bit disappointing for a Queenslander but there was plenty of fish and a sunken ship acting as an artificial reef was a great addition. At one stage we settled on the bottom at 126 feet and the thrusters threw up a lot of sand.
After a cruise of about 45 minutes, we returned to the surface...repeated the passenger swap routine and witnessed the sub diving with the next group aboard.
Now, with the rest of the afternoon to fill, we decided to take a drive around the north west coastline of Maui. We had seen a map warning that the road was narrow and hazardous and to 'Travel at your own risk'. Boy, they weren't kidding! It was extremely narrow, and hugged the cliffs edge with lots of blind corners. Our CX9 was pretty big to manoeuvre...the old Mazda 2 would have been better suited. But we made it! Quite an experience but the scenery was (almost) worth it!
We continued on to complete a circuit of the western part of Maui and stopped for dinner at the Bubba Gump restaurant in Lahaina.
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