"The Sands at Maui Lani" Round

This morning was our first golf round in Maui. We had reserved a morning tee time at the Dunes at Maui Lani golf course. B as usual had done a humongous amount of research on the courses in Maui and their prices. A morning round, which is usually the preferred tee time for most serious golfers, would set you back roughly $250. Naturally, no right minded desi ever paid anything in full. And there is always someone offering something at a discounted price. B got out the laptop and onto the internet to connect to some obscure local site that offered ridiculously cheap round rates. Nice. A couple of quick phone calls on our free landline and we were good to go. Ah, how nice to pay less than half and get full service!

We grabbed a quick brunch at Denny's. Terrible service. In the time that we waited to be seated we could’ve have finished eating!

The day was hot and humid but also mildly windy. If it hadn’t been for the wind, I swear I would’ve been fried. That is not to say that by the end of our honeymoon I was fried anyway.

It’s a good course, lovely service – wet towels, bag tags and all that. Smiling Joe and Freddie greeted us, made sure us honeymooners were not paired with another twosome. The views were beautiful. I might actually end up using the word beautiful several times through my Maui blog, and I promise to use the thesaurus as much as I can, but really there is no other word to describe everything here. A shitty day here would be when your Titleist doesn’t find the cup on your second putt from 1 yard. By that statistic two of my three golfing days here were shitty. This was one of them. I played my usual windshield golf; the ball found every crooked nook and twisted corner just outside the designated fairway. Yes, I am proud to say that I made contact. Direction is an entirely different ball game, pun intended. B was a bit out of touch, but he managed a respectable 93. Definitely nowhere near his best. I usually stop keeping track of shots when I cross the double bogey limit. I was in charge of getting good pictures of B’s swing action for future reference. Don’t tell him, but I was more interested in the mountains in the background. O Haleakala, no ko ai!

Later that day we walked down to the beach at the Ekahi village. One thing about our place of residence, there were many, many elderly people staying there. In a way that’s perfect for us because Wailea is more like a resort area in Maui and with such neighbours there was hardly any disturbance around. I was tired out at the beach that evening and fell asleep really early without much of a dinner. We planned to go to an Italian restaurant called “bada bing” – remember bada bing bada bang bada boom – the Italian Mafioso thingy? B always pronounced it “badaa” like the opposite of “chhota” in Hindi. Tickles my funny bone even now. Apparently he did go to bada bing but their kitchen was closed and he had to settle for a pizza express number. He saved some for me, the dear.