Journeys›Photograph

Passing Showers and Whale Sightings on Maui

·#winter#hiking#rainbows#ocean#whales#waterfalls
A bright rainbow arches across a cloudy sky above the ocean, distant mountains, and a foreground palm tree.

The week on Maui settled into a pattern: showers move through in the morning, and when they clear there's a rainbow standing over the channel, dropping down onto the island across the water. It happened enough times that we stopped scrambling for it and just watched from behind the palm tree off the balcony.

One day we drove out for the waterfalls — a triple fall pouring through the ferns into a pool, and farther on a single narrow one dropping straight into dark water off a rock face. The road there takes longer than the falls themselves.

The whales were the other constant. From up high you'd catch a dark back rolling through the chop, but out on the water one surfaced close enough to see the ridge of its dorsal fin and hear the splash as it went back under, a second fin cutting the surface behind it.

A palm tree silhouette frames a view of the ocean, distant mountains, and a rainbow in a cloudy sky.A vibrant rainbow arcs over the ocean and distant mountains, with palm trees framing the view.A vibrant rainbow stretches across a cloudy sky above distant mountains and the ocean, with a palm tree on the left.A multi-tiered waterfall flows down a rocky, lush green hillside, surrounded by dense tropical foliage, into a pool.A waterfall descends a mossy, rocky cliff into a dark pool, framed by lush greenery and bare tree branches.A dark palm frond silhouette against a sky of golden light breaking through dark clouds.A dark whale's back and dorsal fin are visible in the upper-left of a blue ocean with sunlit ripples.A large dark marine animal's back breaks the surface of sparkling blue water, with a fin splashing in the distance.

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