Maui 2014 - A Trip to the Ocean Center

We woke up to rain today, though Maui rain isn't like your typical rain. If you wore a bathing suit it's warm enough that you could still go to the beach. We had intended to go to the Maui Ocean Center so we figured a rainy day would be a good time to go. Unfortunately the center is a group of buildings and you have go outside between exhibits. It wasn't too bad though it did get a bit irritating getting wet every 15 minutes. I recommend that if you want to go, that you do it on a nice day.

The center itself was quite nice. Lot's of local fish. I imagine all they had to do to stock it was head out to the local reef with some nets. Some of the exhibits were outside including the tide pools. They weren't quite as exciting for Callie, I think because they just had larger creatures like starfish and sea slugs. She prefers some of the smaller creatures, especially the ones where you can touch them and they retreat back into themselves. It's much more fun trying to find them all and get them all hidden at the same time.

Kerry was our guide for the day. At one point I couldn't figure out why she knew so much about the exhibits. I had forgotten that she was carrying the speaking tour machine and was just repeating what she was hearing. Our favorite part was the shark feeding. A diver gets right into the tank and has a microphone so you can hear him as he feeds the manta rays. They look somewhat scary but are quite gentle as they eat right out his hand.

After the ocean center we came back to the condo and went on separate lizard hunts. The boys found 26 and the girls found 32. (I didn't know it was a contest otherwise we would have kept looking.) We ordered pizza for dinner and while we were waiting for it Carter and I went to play catch on the grass. Apparently we were irritating a grumpy lady who was mumbling something about ball playing being against the rules. (I checked and couldn't find that rule.) We have found that the 'owners' aren't too excited about kids wandering around but considering it's the renters that spend most of the time in most of the units each year you'd think they'd figure out we're helping pay for things around here. We finished off the evening watching Mulan on Netflix.