Ok, I feel like it's really been a while since our last update, probably because we have done so much in these past few days. The highlights of the past days have been finishing our room and going on a few day trips so here is a rundown of those exciting things:

As you know, Tim and I were working hard trying to get our room ready. Leo, one of the guys that lives here too and was a pro painter back in the day, primed and painted our floor for us and then we all just played the waiting game. The paint seemed to take forever to dry because it is always so humid here. We kept the door to the room open 24/7 but there is a waterfall right outside the door and it was a battle between wanting to air-dry the room and keeping all the moisture out. Luckily, we continued to live in the nice apartment, Sunrise, and were generally comfortable while waiting for the room.
Finally the floor dried and we could move in! It was a big job packing all of our things up again and moving them downstairs. As Murphy's law would have it, we had the strangest set backs even on the day of the move. Leo has a dog, Callie, who is a good old girl but I think she's a little crazy. Most of the time she is very loving and comes to play with us but, occasionally, she seems to not recognize us (or who knows what) and growls, barks, and basically goes into attack mode when we walk by. Of course, on this morning, when it would be so much easier to move our things from one room to another by simply going down a flight of stairs, Callie positioned herself on the stairs and played scary-growling-ready-to-eat-us-guard dog! So we had to haul all of our things "the long way" around the outskirts of the property! It was definitley all the more satisfying when all of our things were finally in "our room". Tim and I spent the morning unpacking and making the room cozy. Somehow the room feels much cozier than the pictures portray. Perhaps this is because we finally have a place to call ours and that feels great. By the end of that day we had fully unpacked our things for the first time since being in Maui.
With our room in order, we finally felt more rooted than we ever had before and we were able to take some day trips now that we had easy access to our packs, swim gear, etc. The first trip we did was a drive out to Twin Falls. Twin Falls is a nice hiking area two miles south of the Huelo Farm we were originally living on. The entrance to the park is marked by a fruitstand similar to the one I worked in and we got some fresh fruit smoothies and lilikoi (passion fruit) to snack on. The park consists of nicely maintained dirt walkways that snake through the jungle. Turn on any given path and it will lead you to a small waterfall or shady jungle pool. We had a lot of fun climbing around the rocks and discovering new views of different falls at every turn. Maybe we'll go back for a swim sometime.
Speaking of swimming, we had quite an adventure in the water on a different day trip. We went out to Kaanapali beach, on the North West side of the island, near Lahaina, equiped with snorkeling gear! Sitting on the beach, you wouldn't imagine that 20 feet out in the water was a large, thriving coral reef. After getting over the initial waves you have to break through, Tim and I swam around the reefs pretty peacefully. It was a windy day so the water was somewhat murky but it didn't stop us from seeing some amazing things. The fish on this reef were real tropical fish, all pretty large and of all different colors. Our favorites were large yellow fish (I think there's one of these in the movie Finding Nemo :) ), black fish with florescent outlines around their bodies and tails (Dungeon Trigger Fish), the Hawaii state fish which is called Humuhumukununukuapua'a (seriously!), and a completely rainbow colored fish which I can't seem to find online. We saw three really unique things too. First I saw a trumpet fish, which is a really long fish with a trumpet-like nose. Second, Tim showed me a puffer fish that we followed for a while which was pretty cool. And lastly, I saw a...drum roll...MANTA RAY! This was totally crazy. I looked to my side and not two arm-lengths away from me was a gigantic manta. I freaked out! I came up and started yelling to Tim who was 10 feet away. People on the beach must have thought I was being eaten or something by how I was yelling for him. I just really wanted him to see it but, of course, he couldn't hear me and by the time I looked down again the the thing was gone. I probably scared it half to death! Well, it was really cool to see such a thing but I just started thinking about how something so big can get so close to you so silently (...shark attack...).
The day after snorkeling, we went from sea level all the way up to 10,000ft to climb Haleakala volcano! To get to the top of this world famous, dormant volcano there is actually a really nice paved road that takes you up almost to the summit. We had a long drive up through the clouds to a spot where we could leave our car and hike a short distance to the top. From there you can look into the crater and see an amazing sight. The crater seems like a strange island floating in a sea of clouds. Within the deep valley of the crater are several very large, burnt red cinder cones left over from smaller eruptions over the past 1000 years. The majority of our day we spent actually hikin down into the crater!
The Sliding Sands trail starts at the summit of the mountain and descends several thousand feet into the mouth of the volcano. There is very little vegitation there and the climate is a strange mix of hot sun and icecold breezes. When the strong wind dies down for a few seconds the place is almost entirely devoid of sound. When you clap or shout, the sound seems to disappear almost instantly. It's really a fascinating place. We took the trail three miles down toward a cinder cone that you could climb and look into. We had lunch on the edge of the cinder cone and watched the clouds roll around the edge of the crater - this looked like a strange beach and ocean of clouds. We then turned back and felt the pain of having to climb three miles out of a crater. As much as the path was relaxing and fun the whole way in, it was entirely, brutaly, uphill the whole three miles out. I have to say that, without even a minute of level ground, it was probably one of the hardest hikes I've done. Tim was a trooper beyond belief and we've agreed that if we can do that hike, at that elevation, in those weather conditions, with the packs we were carrying, we can likely do anything. We bought some patches at the top of the summit to commemorate our adventure in the crater, a truly memorable experience.
Well, I guess that is all for now. We continue to look for jobs and come up with nothing but we are definitely enjoying our time here, as you can see. The weather is beautiful always and we're sending you good thoughts and warm breezes from Maui! We'll update about our upcoming adventures soon. Till then, take care!

love,
Tim and Anna

Tearing out the old carpet

Bleaching EVERYTHING!

Primer

Not the fanciest color, but it was free haha

Room is finished!

Twin Falls

A small waterfall

Snorkeling at Kaanapali Beach

Anna about to explore

10,024 feet! The summit of volcano Haleakala.

The volcano's crater.

Above the entire world

An ocean of clouds.

Ok, I feel like it's really been a while since our last update, probably because we have done so much in these past few days. The highlights of the past days have been finishing our room and going on a few day trips so here is a rundown of those exciting things:
As you know, Tim and I were working hard trying to get our room ready. Leo, one of the guys that lives here too and was a pro painter back in the day, primed and painted our floor for us and then we all just played the waiting game. The paint seemed to take forever to dry because it is always so humid here. We kept the door to the room open 24/7 but there is a waterfall right outside the door and it was a battle between wanting to air-dry the room and keeping all the moisture out. Luckily, we continued to live in the nice apartment, Sunrise, and were generally comfortable while waiting for the room.
Finally the floor dried and we could move in! It was a big job packing all of our things up again and moving them downstairs. As Murphy's law would have it, we had the strangest set backs even on the day of the move. Leo has a dog, Callie, who is a good old girl but I think she's a little crazy. Most of the time she is very loving and comes to play with us but, occasionally, she seems to not recognize us (or who knows what) and growls, barks, and basically goes into attack mode when we walk by. Of course, on this morning, when it would be so much easier to move our things from one room to another by simply going down a flight of stairs, Callie positioned herself on the stairs and played scary-growling-ready-to-eat-us-guard dog! So we had to haul all of our things "the long way" around the outskirts of the property! It was definitley all the more satisfying when all of our things were finally in "our room". Tim and I spent the morning unpacking and making the room cozy. Somehow the room feels much cozier than the pictures portray. Perhaps this is because we finally have a place to call ours and that feels great. By the end of that day we had fully unpacked our things for the first time since being in Maui.
With our room in order, we finally felt more rooted than we ever had before and we were able to take some day trips now that we had easy access to our packs, swim gear, etc. The first trip we did was a drive out to Twin Falls. Twin Falls is a nice hiking area two miles south of the Huelo Farm we were originally living on. The entrance to the park is marked by a fruitstand similar to the one I worked in and we got some fresh fruit smoothies and lilikoi (passion fruit) to snack on. The park consists of nicely maintained dirt walkways that snake through the jungle. Turn on any given path and it will lead you to a small waterfall or shady jungle pool. We had a lot of fun climbing around the rocks and discovering new views of different falls at every turn. Maybe we'll go back for a swim sometime.
Speaking of swimming, we had quite an adventure in the water on a different day trip. We went out to Kaanapali beach, on the North West side of the island, near Lahaina, equiped with snorkeling gear! Sitting on the beach, you wouldn't imagine that 20 feet out in the water was a large, thriving coral reef. After getting over the initial waves you have to break through, Tim and I swam around the reefs pretty peacefully. It was a windy day so the water was somewhat murky but it didn't stop us from seeing some amazing things. The fish on this reef were real tropical fish, all pretty large and of all different colors. Our favorites were large yellow fish (I think there's one of these in the movie Finding Nemo :) ), black fish with florescent outlines around their bodies and tails (Dungeon Trigger Fish), the Hawaii state fish which is called Humuhumukununukuapua'a (seriously!), and a completely rainbow colored fish which I can't seem to find online. We saw three really unique things too. First I saw a trumpet fish, which is a really long fish with a trumpet-like nose. Second, Tim showed me a puffer fish that we followed for a while which was pretty cool. And lastly, I saw a...drum roll...MANTA RAY! This was totally crazy. I looked to my side and not two arm-lengths away from me was a gigantic manta. I freaked out! I came up and started yelling to Tim who was 10 feet away. People on the beach must have thought I was being eaten or something by how I was yelling for him. I just really wanted him to see it but, of course, he couldn't hear me and by the time I looked down again the the thing was gone. I probably scared it half to death! Well, it was really cool to see such a thing but I just started thinking about how something so big can get so close to you so silently (...shark attack...).
The day after snorkeling, we went from sea level all the way up to 10,000ft to climb Haleakala volcano! To get to the top of this world famous, dormant volcano there is actually a really nice paved road that takes you up almost to the summit. We had a long drive up through the clouds to a spot where we could leave our car and hike a short distance to the top. From there you can look into the crater and see an amazing sight. The crater seems like a strange island floating in a sea of clouds. Within the deep valley of the crater are several very large, burnt red cinder cones left over from smaller eruptions over the past 1000 years. The majority of our day we spent actually hikin down into the crater!
The Sliding Sands trail starts at the summit of the mountain and descends several thousand feet into the mouth of the volcano. There is very little vegitation there and the climate is a strange mix of hot sun and icecold breezes. When the strong wind dies down for a few seconds the place is almost entirely devoid of sound. When you clap or shout, the sound seems to disappear almost instantly. It's really a fascinating place. We took the trail three miles down toward a cinder cone that you could climb and look into. We had lunch on the edge of the cinder cone and watched the clouds roll around the edge of the crater - this looked like a strange beach and ocean of clouds. We then turned back and felt the pain of having to climb three miles out of a crater. As much as the path was relaxing and fun the whole way in, it was entirely, brutaly, uphill the whole three miles out. I have to say that, without even a minute of level ground, it was probably one of the hardest hikes I've done. Tim was a trooper beyond belief and we've agreed that if we can do that hike, at that elevation, in those weather conditions, with the packs we were carrying, we can likely do anything. We bought some patches at the top of the summit to commemorate our adventure in the crater, a truly memorable experience.
Well, I guess that is all for now. We continue to look for jobs and come up with nothing but we are definitely enjoying our time here, as you can see. The weather is beautiful always and we're sending you good thoughts and warm breezes from Maui! We'll update about our upcoming adventures soon. Till then, take care!

love,
Tim and Anna

Time for another update! So we ended last time on leaving our hotel and moving into this new place in Wailuku. Yesterday was our first day and we just literally attacked the room we are going to live in. Mike, the manager, and two other work-trade tenants Leo and Carl, helped us pull the carpet out of the floor of our room. (We will put pictures up later of the whole transformation process of the room.) We realized that there had been a leak on the side wall and literally just dirt and water were coming into the room. I swept out the whole place while Tim, Leo, and Carl scraped off all the carpet-glue (or whatever is used to glue that blue foam under carpets, I'm still learning so much!) We bleached all the walls and cleaned the wood paneling as well. After a few hours of work the room already looked a lot brighter.
We really lucked out with the people who live at this place too. Leo is a painter and offered to paint the whole floor for us which was stunning because Tim and I were definitely expecting to just do it ourselves. Everyone has been really helpful and very friendly. Mike told us that we could live in a studio on the property while our room is being painted. The room we're staying in is called Sunrise and it has a beautiful view and is surrounded by fruit trees. I guess while we continue to work on our room we are still living a somewhat transient life and Tim and I are both restless to finally unpack and call something "home". In the mean time, though, we feel we really have a nice place with nice people helping us out and that is already a big comfort to us.
Here we're attaching some photos of the grounds we live on. It's really a jungle with waterfalls and abundant fruit trees. We'll put up more pictures of our room as it progresses. Till next time!

Tim and Anna

The studio we are temporarily staying in

Another view of our studio

The entrance to our room that is half way re-modeled

Entrance to our shared kitchen

Front outside view of our apartment/shared kitchen

Waterfall just outside our room

Garden that is somewhat overgrown with a partial view of the volcano Puukau

First half of the walkway up to our room

Second half of the walkway up to our room

View of our somewhat cluttered shared kitchen

The search for a new life

Last time we left off at the point where Tim and I took a cab into one of the center towns of north Maui and checked into a hotel. From there on, life didn't get any less exciting! We knew we had only three nights to find an apartment and jobs for both of us or the hotel life would start to get really expensive. That first night we applied to as many jobs as we could find on craigslist ranging from nannying to waitressing to handyman work, etc. We thought we'd get a good head start that night so hopefully by the next morning we would already be getting responses. We were so excited at the prospect of actually getting some dinner that wasn't Ramen Noodles that we quickly left the hotel and found a little chinese restaurant near by which tasted probably better than any food I ever had just because I was so worried about not eating at the farm.
The next morning we headed over to the mall near our hotel to get some breakfast and look around the shops to see if anyone was hiring. We actually got some calls back about possible housing but the first few were either too expensive or wanted more than two people to move in. Finally we got a call from a nice woman who said she and her husband really needed helping getting their little community back on its feet after a crew that had been living/working there basically ran it into the ground. She sent us some applications and told us to get in touch with her manager, Mike to see about room rates etc. Honestly, that's about it for the first day. We still applied to a lot more places and looked for more housing but that was the most promising lead. It was interesting to realize that we were basically homeless in hawaii living out of a very small hotel room.
The second morning at the hotel was more interesting. We had set up an appointment to go look at the house we had found the previous day but before we left we checked craigslist again and couldn't beleive what we found. A man in Haiku who owned a bed+breakfast sort of deal needed someone to live on the property and take care of the grounds only four hours a day and he would pay $12/hour. That was insane! We calculated that if we could live there for free and make that sort of money, we could work for a few months, save a ton, and then just sort of vacation for the last couple months. That sounded pretty good to us! We would go meet with that man as soon as we could.
Before that, though, Mike came to pick us up and show us his place in Wailuku. It was technically a short distance from the hotel but up such a winding dirt road that the trip took a while. We headed far into the jungle where you could see only local people lived. Mike was very friendly and told us about the dynamics in that neighborhood, just that you really had to respect the local culture and stay off other people' s land. Understandable. We pulled up to a pretty big lot with a number of little huts/houses on it. The area was very lush and I was glad to be back in a very natural environment (that was actually one thing I missed about the farm). Star fruit, guava, avocados, passion fruit, and bananas grow everywhere and Mike gave us a bag full of star fruit right off the tree to take home.
The room we would have on this property is right next to a waterfall and the window looks out onto a very jungle-like scene. There are so many flowers and unique plants, and jungle dogs and cats around the property. It really has a wild yet peaceful feel to it.
We learned that we could live in the room for only $270 a month which is honestly unheardof for Maui as long as we both put in 6 hours of work trade a week. Well, since that's only like an hour a day that sounded pretty good to us. We thanked Mike for showing us the place and headed back to our hotel.
We really wanted to meet up with Ken, the guy who offered the free room plus $12/hour for work so we bit the bullet and rented a car for the day so we could drive out to Haiku. We liked the place that Mike had shown us but the prospect of making so much money and living for free had our minds set on only that one track. After another impossibly confusing dirt road, we finally pulled up to Ken's and were met by a very tan, laid-back (this is basically the only kind of person you'll meet in Maui) dude who showed us the room we could stay in. It was a tiny room but had good, light windows and while he showed it to us he explained that "both of you or just one of you could work and maybe the other person could get a job in town and, you know, if you're making money you could kick me a few dollars for the room..." Um...sorry, what? He was going to pay us $12 cash but expect money in return for the room too? Something wasn't right. We asked if we had misunderstood. Oh, ken told us, no, of course he wasn't going to pay us. He had already found someone that had real experience on a construction crew that he was going to pay to work. Well, we were a little confused. We had made it out to the guy's house not four hours after the post went up on craigslist so we wondered when he had time to find someone else. What do ya do? We said thank you and headed out.
On the way back we met with one other person who seemed to be offering a decent deal. He actually needed someone to record his cd for him in his in-home studio in exchange for free rent. Tim couldn't believe his luck when he found that! After hectic driving around, we found the guy's home and met him. He was a super space cadet but an interesting guy, you could say. He was the embodyment of "one man's junk is another man's treasure" and his whole yard was full of scrap metal and wood, old trailers and busses, cans of paint, old tires, marble slabs, you name it. He told us excitedly about where and how he picked up these odd things and how he sold them for profit. Pretty interesting but, honestly, made for one heck of a back yard. He showed us the studio and the room where we would live which was kind of just a box they made out of scrap wood in the back yard. I know Tim stands up for the guy more than I do but I just couldn't live in a junk yard. Sorry! We headed back to the hotel to consider our options.
Sitting in our room, I felt like I hit rock bottom. We hadn't heard back from any jobs and the best place we had to live was asking rent and needed A LOT of fixing up. We also realized that day that it was pretty impossible to live on the island without a car and, even if we did move into Mike's place, it would be an adventure just getting down the dirt road every day. We did what all adventurers do when they hit a wall...we called our parents.
By the end of the phone calls, Tim and I came back with the same conclusion. We would rent a car for a month and rent the room for one month as well. We would take our time finding jobs and, in the mean time, really just relax and try to enjoy where we were. In the past few days we had been a whirlwind of stress, feeling like we were racing the clock. If we gave ourselves a month, we would know infinitely more by the end of that time than we did after two days. We went out to Kihei to get the monthly car lease and, before returning our first rental car, for one glorious hour we actually were the owners of two cars! What a good life!
Now, it is the last morning at our hotel and we are ready to pack up our car and head out to our jungle home in Wailuku. Tim and I are excited to attack this room and make it our own. Hopefully we will find some jobs too! Now that our situation has changed we'll be able to keep this blog up and stay in touch with you a lot more. Now we enjoy our time and hope for the best.

Soon I will write a little more about our new home and we'll put up some photos of the jungle palace!

Love you all
Anna and Tim

Not so "WWOOFing" farms and such...

We arrived in Maui after luckily making every standby flight we were listed for. A pretty easy journey over made us excited to finally be here and we called our manager Jonathan to come pick us up from the airport. Well, when he pulled up, my heart sank. Here we had the most stereotypical hippie surfer bro you can imagine. His clothes barely stayed on him for all the rips and his hair was dreadlocked, I guess, into one really hot "beaver tail" (as Tim put it). I could probably forgive this fashion sense if the person could look at me straight or keep his focus for more than a few seconds (while driving) but, as it was, Jon welcomed us halfheartedly through completely glazed over eyes (if you know what I mean).
Anyway, what to do? We piled all our things into the pickup and climbed in. Our manager proved a somewhat decent tour guide along the way as he told us about the sugar cane fields, Haleakala national park, the town of Paia, and the famous surfer beaches Hookipa and Jaws. Sadly, he had a difficult time tour-guiding and driving at the same time as he used the whoooole road, both sides, very liberally. We stopped a few times along the way to pick up some Hawaiian soda and, of course, a 40 of Heineken for Jon which he decided to crack open 3/4 of the way home. Safe.
We finally made it to the farm and there some more surprises were in store. We saw the outdoor kitchen, which looked decent, and the rec room. Jon took us into the tent village where we found tents, as expected, but something was very strange. The tents had huge slashes in them, as if from a knife. Yeah, Jon informed us offhandedly, the tent village had recently been broken into by local hooligans with knives. Great! But, don't worry, the police were NOT called because on this side of the island police don't really have much say. They simply told the local elders about the robberies and hoped that some social pressure would straighten the hooligans out and maybe make them return the goods. While hearing this story, Tim and I considered how much of our lives we brought with us and how much we couldn't afford to wait on "social pressure from elders" if anything should ever happen.
Regardless! We moved into our tent (a side note: we were told there was a full size bed in each tent, well there was a full size....box spring). We stole a couple twin beds out of an empty tent and created a bed for ourselves. After a little unpacking we decided to call it a night. I think we felt pretty overwhelmed and were feeling very jet-lagged. We would see what the next day brought.
We woke up the following morning at about 2am Maui time (that's exactly 7 chicago time) and had a hard time going back to sleep. This was ok since I was scheduled to work at 6:30. Tim and I got up to have some breakfast. We decided to scope out the kitchen a little closer. What we discovered in our "well stocked communal kitchen" was amazing! After debating between our options of Ramen Noodles or Raisen Bran (that's about it for what was on the shelves) we decided to go with the cereal. Upon opening, though, we saw that the cereal was what about 15 bugs had also chosen to eat that morning. After searching the kitchen, we finally found some "clean" bowls and spoons and had some cereal, bugs removed. There was no milk, of course, so dry cereal it was. There was a good part of breakfast though, the jungle cats came out to eat with us and a really sweet kitten sat on my lap and ate the raisins out of my raisen bran.
Ok, time to work. I had to meet people at 6:30 and Tim was scheduled to work at 10:30. People started arriving in the kitchen for our work shift about 40 minutes after we were supposed to meet. We headed up to the road to set up the fruit stand. The fruit stand has to be taken down every night because other local fruit stand owners burn down their competitions' stands if they are left unattended. Well, almost all the people who work on the farm came out to help set up the stand. (There were four guys and five girls on the farm, including me and Tim.) We all hauled boxes of fruit up to the road and started to unload everything. The kitchen inside the stand had to be prepared because the stand also sells smoothies and fruit crepes. Everyone seemed to work in slow motion and get very easily distracted. That's probably because Mary Jane was the hardest worker among them, she helped everyone out, and it wasn't even 7:30am yet! Anyway, we got the stand set up and people started coming by almost immediately. After being told by my "co-workers" that "I'd just figure it out as I went along" I knew it would be a long day if I didn't just kick it into gear so I really pretty much ran the stand for 6 hours. Made $5 in tips! (That's like a dollar an hour! - name the movie!).
Tim had a little "harder" of a work day. In trying to put in 6 hours of work (that's the required amount per day to be able to live there), he did everything the managers could come up with in about an hour and a half. This included raking mulch and gravel where he encountered Maui's famous 6 inch Red Centipede (google image search that!). Apparently their bites feel like "an electrified baseball bat hitting you" or "a gunshot wound" depending on who you ask. After being told "Hey man, just pace yourself. If you don't do any work, someone else here will you know bro", he "spread" out his work by taking a tour of the grounds, about 10 times. We also learned that on that same day, the farm was hiring 3 more people to help with the extensive amounts of work that had to be done! (insert sarcastic, enthusiastic voice)
When we were done working, everyone went into town and Tim and I regrouped in the kitchen. Then we started to talk. We were discussing how maybe after a month or two we should probably leave...then, after a moment of silent pondering, I turned to Tim and said, If you wanted to leave tomorrow, I'd be down. And he said "Let's go pack."
We made some calls and got a hotel room booked and a cab. Due to the fact that we never really unpacked, we packed up our things in under 20 minutes and were up on the road in a flash waiting for our taxi to come. We called our manager and told him that we realized we just needed to make some money on the island and, "for that reason only" we were going to head out. His only question was if he and Tim could still jam sometime. In all fairness, he and one other boy we talked to as we were leaving were very kind to us. It wasn't that the people weren't nice enough, it's just that the lack of almost everything that was promised made life there a little difficult. We signed up to do some real work, which wasn't there, and some recreational activities like hiking and biking, but "recreation" really only meant one thing to the people of this farm.
And so we headed into Kahului to check into the seaside hotel. Here we have been searching craigslist day and night for a place to live and jobs. This search has been an adventure in itself which we will write about soon.

Thanks for reading! We miss you all and love you very much!
Aloha,
Anna and Tim