Maui: Day 3: Northwestern part

We first checked out the 'Iam Valley and Needle, in which we thought we were somewhere else that had a swinging bridge at (which we found out later it was several miles further west). The needle was pretty cool, and snapped a few photos there. We headed back out of the valley and headed west on highway 340. When we hit the area that had the swinging bridge (Wahe'e Valley), we found out it was gonna cost us money just to walk on the bridge. We decided it wasn't worth it, so we continued west. We again hit some nasty one lane driving that was very similar to the road to and from Han. There were a few times where an oncoming car was fast approaching and we had to back up to a turnout to let them by and vice versa. We found an area called the Nakalele Blowhole, where the ocean waves would crash against the cliff and into a hole in the cliff pushing up water thru a hole in the mountain much like a whale's blowhole would shoot out. It was pretty cool looking. And wet. The climb up and down was a little awkward, since there wasn't exactly a clear path and you had to hop down over several rocks. Continuing on thru the winding one lane road we finally hit a two lane road and it was smooth sailing from there. We headed around the northwest part of the island with spectacular views that reminded me of Ireland (which I've never been to, but it looks like it does on TV!). We headed south now and back to where we were for Tom/Steph's wedding in Ka'anapali. We had lunch at a restaurant at Whaler's Village (the same restaurant that Tom took us for drinks on Wednesday). I had fish and chips and Zenia had ????. We decided to walk down the beach a bit near the cliffs where Tom and Steph got married by the Sheridan Hotel. We laid out in the sun for a bit and watched a wind storm tornado looking thing come thru and blow someones raft 100yards into the air and out into the ocean. I laughed at how crazy the situation was. Little did I know the same thing would happen to us a few minutes later, blowing one of our beach mats way out of the way. We didn't even see where it blew away. It wasn't until about 30 minutes later when someone came up to Zenia and told her where it went. I tried to snorkel in the area. The water was amazingly clear and quite warm. Trying to put on my flippers for the first time in the ocean turned out to be a little embarrassing. I was sitting on the beach where the water came up to me, while putting on the flippers. The current was so powerful that it rolled me over and pulled me into the ocean a couple feet. I'm pretty sure many people saw me rolling around in the waves. I know Zenia did, because I saw her laughing. Once I got the whole gear on, trying to figure out how to snorkel, it was amazing. I started out seeing one fish that I followed down the coast to the cliffs where I saw a million huge fish floating below. I ran into someone I didn't see who was also snorkeling. I turned to get out of the snorkeler's way, when I saw a couple dozen other snorkelers right in front of me. This must have been the prime spot. It was still pretty cool watching people dive down to take photos of themselves underwater. It got a little too crowded, so I headed to the beach and walked back to Zenia. We were both pretty hot and decided to get out of the sun and rinse off. We walked around the shops there at Whaler's Point, killing time before we headed to the airport. We got a smoothie and headed back to our car, heading down the coast and around and up to Kahului.