Hawaii Day Seven: Maui

I am not going to lie yesterday was a bit of a rough day. Rodger and I went to the beach/park up the way from our hotel yesterday morning. We had enjoyed snorkeling there last year so we wanted to go there again this year. We did snorkel for a bit and saw some fish. A few minutes after we got out of the water we heard someone yell "call 911" and there were a lot of people running towards the water. Then it sounded like a woman was screaming "shark", at the time it sounded like that and everyone ran out of the water but afterwards we thought about it and we think that she was yelling "John", who was a doctor that was in the water. We saw an older man being dragged out of the water by two other people and he was placed down on the sand. People began taking turns giving him CPR for quite some time before the police and the paramedics came and got out the paddles to resuscitate him, that didn't work and the paramedics continued to give him CPR. Someone said that they thought he must have had a heart attack in the water. During this time I looked down the beach and saw the man's wife sitting in the sand with two women sitting next to her with their arms around her. The man did not make it and it was heartbreaking to watch this whole scene unfold. My heart really broke in half for his poor wife.

I will never forget what happened yesterday. I will never forget seeing those two doctors (snorkelers) sprinting down the beach to help that man, the poor man laying on the beach receiving CPR, and that woman's wail when they told her he was gone.

Whenever I hear someone say the world is turning bad or I start to lose faith in humanity I will think back to yesterday and how dozens of strangers ran to that man's aid and were there to comfort his wife, and how for a half hour strangers took turns giving him CPR, and the way two women walked his wife down the beach after they took her husband's body away. The image of that woman in her bathing suit being enveloped by two strangers walking her back to her hotel will forever be etched in my mind. It was such a sad scene and I wish there was something that could have been done for that poor couple.

So needless to say it wasn't a good morning and we didn't do much for the afternoon, just came back to the room and sat in silence. We talked a little but mostly just processed what happened. I will find things to take away from this, I already have but it was so sad. Like Rodger said, the most disturbing part of the whole thing was that they were just on vacation and taking advantage of life, like you should and then this happens.

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We already had a sunset cruise scheduled and we went ahead and went. It seems strange to start talking about it now but it was what we did yesterday so below are the pictures from our sunset cruise.

The boat left from the Lahaina Harbor and it left around 5pm and went around Maui ending during the sunset. There were amazing views. The food was great and we met some fun people, we ate at a table with a couple from Boston (Celtics fans and in the pesticide business (Vickie/Dad) and an older couple from New York. I wanted to adopt this older couple, they were just so sweet and funny. They have been married almost fifty years, he is eighty and I would guess she was a bit younger, but still traveling quite a bit, and even have timeshares. They were great, I hope to enjoy travel like that when I am their age. The man, Bob, was so sweet and was telling us funny stories the whole time. At one point he leaned over to Rodger and said while looking at me, "I know why you fell for her, it's because she has such a happy laugh". I thought that was really sweet.
















Watching the sunset was great and the cruise had Hawaiian dancers and singers and they put on a little show. I am glad that we did the cruise, it was a lot of fun.