Maui excursion

[tacy]

Hi everyone-

Just got back from our POH cruise on Tuesday...still operating on jet-lag and Hawaii time!

We had a great time, but really wanted to endorse an excursion that we took in Maui. It was absolutely fabulous and we 'stumbled' upon it.

We used some friends with Cruise Planners to book our cruise and they had given us a link to their approved excursions through Shoretrips.com.

We booked a Maui Jeep Tour for our second day in Maui. We felt that this was something comparable to one we took in Cozumel. Boy, we were wrong in a big way!

The tour in Cozumel was a convoy of sorts with a guide in the front jeep and one in the back jeep and we toured by driving ourselves and got very, very dirty by 4-wheeling. It was great!

But in Maui, when we met our tour guide outside of the security gate at the port, we knew this was going to be different! Our jeep was a new 4 door wrangler and we had our own personal driver! Arnold DeClercq. Turns out he was the 'Activity Coordinator' for Activity Warehouse and Hidden Adventures, LLC in Hawaii.

To make a long story short, he was fabulous. He drove us all over Maui-took us places you can't get a rental car and gave us great commentary during the whole trip. When we booked it, it was described as a 4 hour trip. He picked us up at 10:30 and dropped us off at the port at 5:00. Much more than advertised!

He made multiple stops for pictures and potty breaks. We even stopped at someone's house/roadside stand and were treated to FRESH banana bread and coconut strips.

I just have to recommend this tour-you will see things that you could never see on your own. Plus the history/tidbits he shares along the way are a bonus!

His site is

www.mauijeeptours.com

 

Other info is as follows:

Hidden Adventures: 808-264-1423

PO Box 11556

Lahaina, Maui, HI 96761

email: hiddenadventures@maui.net

 

The Activity Warehouse is at 602 Front Street in Lahaina. That telephone number is 800-923-4004.

 

He also suggested booking anything with the zipline, Old Lahaina Luau etc, very early as most are totally booked for up to 2 months in advance.

[amylynn68]

Sounds like you guys had a blast. I still have day 2 in maui open because mudbug was full. Maybe I will book this instead of waiting to see if anything opens up. Would you be able to post some photos? We leave on Monday on POH. We cant wait to get there. Thanks for the review.

 

Amy

[tacy]

Pictures have not been downloaded yet-haven't gotten up the energy to do all that. Although since we are still on 'Hawaii-time' that could be done at 4 am when we are sleepless!

I highly recommend this jeep tour-the mudbug looked like fun (and very dirty) but this was superb!

We did a Blue Hawaiian helicopter tour on Kauai that was great too. Next visit to Hawaii, I am taking a helicopter tour on all the islands that I visit. Gives you a nice perspective of where you are and how insignificant we are compared to the land. That would be something you could do on Maui also.

 

Now that I have been on my first visit to Hawaii, I think my next one would be to stay on Maui and visit Kauai.

Although Hilo was ok and the Volcanoes National Park there was awesome, the island looked a lot like home (minus the bamboo and ginger!). We did a beach day on Kona and to get there, had to drive through the lava desert. That was neat and the beach was nice. But again, there are beaches on the other islands too. Maui was the most breath-taking of the islands with Kauai running a close second.

Oahu really disappointed me as it was so commercialized. But it is pretty neat to walk down the streets and see people dressed in suits walking with people of all ages carrying surfboards and wearing bathing suits.

 

The temperature was great too-mostly low 80's. Low humidity. Nothing like here with our 103 degrees this week (not something we are used to here in Carolina!)

We were informed by one of the guides that Hawaii is not a tropical climate-which I had been under the assumption that it was.

 

Hope you have a great trip next week-hopefully Hurricane Flossie will be long gone!

[txn_crzn]

i've been trying to contact the maui jeep tour people to see where the tour actually departs from but i haven't been able to reach them, through email or phone.

 

i wanted to see where the tour departed from because on the website it said something about leaving from kahului but i noticed the office address is in lahaina. just trying to see which port it would be better to take the tour at since we'll be in kahului and lahaina. can you tell me where your tour started?

[Disneyworld]

i've been trying to contact the maui jeep tour people to see where the tour actually departs from but i haven't been able to reach them, through email or phone.

 

i wanted to see where the tour departed from because on the website it said something about leaving from kahului but i noticed the office address is in lahaina. just trying to see which port it would be better to take the tour at since we'll be in kahului and lahaina. can you tell me where your tour started?

I have been trying to contact Arnold too, and no luck either. but, if you go to the HIdden adv. webstie and click on 1/2 day adventure tours, it says something about "on your return to Lahaina".

So, I am presuming it is out of there.

If you look on the shore excursion website mentioned in this original post, it does show a jeep tour starting at 10:30 am. which is the time this original post was picked up. this costs 105.

On Hidden Adv. webiste, it says that the tour starts at 8 to 2:30pm,and costs 85. so I am not sure they are the same tour.

Since we dock at Lahaina at 8 and it is a tendor port, I have asked Arnold if it is possible to take this tour.

I will post if I hear from him and I'd appreciate if you post if you hear first.

[Disneyworld]

I just went on the shoretrips.com website and read further. Their tour says that on some tours some member of your party will be required to drive. :eek: I had thought about just booking thru them if I don't hear from Arnold, but now that I read this, my DH doesn't want to drive at all. Also, the highlight on the post seemed to be Arnold's knowledge of the area. So, I am just going to hope that Arnold returns my emails or calls.

[txn_crzn]

we've been calling but unable to ever reach someone or a machine and emails have gone unanswered. the description on the websites looks so awesome and the review sounded great...but i think i've almost given up. :( b/c if its taken this long to get back to us it makes me weary about the tour itself. the only reason i don't want to give up is b/c the tour sounds like something me and DH would really enjoy.

 

i had done some research on private jeep tours in maui and they were charging like $60 an hour or something like that.

 

please do keep me updated if you hear anything. and i'll do the same for you. i'm on Pride of Aloha departing Sept. 9th, so i'm trying to finalize all our excursions. if this fails i think we're going to rent a car and explore on our own.

[Disneyworld]

we've been calling but unable to ever reach someone or a machine and emails have gone unanswered. the description on the websites looks so awesome and the review sounded great...but i think i've almost given up. :( b/c if its taken this long to get back to us it makes me weary about the tour itself. the only reason i don't want to give up is b/c the tour sounds like something me and DH would really enjoy.

 

i had done some research on private jeep tours in maui and they were charging like $60 an hour or something like that.

 

please do keep me updated if you hear anything. and i'll do the same for you. i'm on Pride of Aloha departing Sept. 9th, so i'm trying to finalize all our excursions. if this fails i think we're going to rent a car and explore on our own.

Just to let you know what else I did, was call the Activity Warehouse that was mentioned and I did get a receptionist and she gave me to someone named Tom. I didn't get too much out of Tom except that this tour was something that Arnold did on his own and that Arnold had the day off yesterday and that Tom would try to get a hold of him yesterday. Of course, I didn't hear from him, but this guy Tom took a message. I, like you, am very leary when someone doesn't return our calls, etc.

As I said, we could book it thru the shoretrips.com for 105. and I guess hope that Arnold shows up. I don't know what we'll do. I'll just hang in there for a couple of days. We live on the East coast( Florida) so it's hard to do all this with the time zone changes.

I guess I could call shoretrips.com and ask about Arnold. I'll let you know of my progress (or no progress):(

We aren't leaving until Sept. 29th for the POA 11 night cruise, so we have time, but I'd like to have all our tours settled soon.

[tacy]

We booked through Shore Trips and our tour went out of Kahului. Arnold met us right outside of the security gate in the rental parking lot. ( he is based in Lahaina and also lives there)

We thought that we were going to get to drive (as that was what we did in Cozumel) and we were disappointed that we did not get to! That lasted about 10 minutes. For all the places we ended up-I am grateful that we did not drive. Lots of harrowing roads!

 

Our tour was $105 and was to be from 10:30-2:30 but he picked us up around 10:10 and dropped us off between 5 and 5:15 at the pick-up spot. There were no negatives in the adventure at all!

We got way more out of it than we paid!

 

I am sorry that he is not returning calls etc-he is the one that gave me his cards and contact information to distribute. I can't imagine why he would not be appreciative of the business.

 

However, I would certainly use him again.

 

If you have never been to Hawaii, but you have been to Cancun or Cozumel (or any other beach destination in the Caribbean) you will notice a big difference. We have been bombarded by 'sales' for tours at all others places we have visited-to the point of becoming quite uncomfortable trying to get away from the people working for the tours. So different in Hawaii. It appears that if you want to do a tour, you seek out the 'sales' person. Never once were we approached by anyone hawking their wares on any island. We thought that was just very strange. There was absolutely no advertisement at all! If you wanted a tour, then you really had to search for a place to book something.

 

Hope that everyone wanting to do the jeep tour gets to experience it!

[circeechar]

Hi Everyone

 

Gee that sounds like fun.....I would love to do a jeep tour.

Like Tacy...we took a jeep tour in Cozumel....and love it alot.

 

If you happen to get any information....would you pass it along?

We are due to go to Hawaii in Nov.

 

Thanks for the tip....and hope someone hears from him

 

Sharon

[Disneyworld]

I would assume that all of you who have been trying to get a hold of Arnold have heard from him.

After many tries, we finally got a hold of him at the Activity warehouse number. Just after we hung up with him after we called him, he didnt' realize he had just talked to us, and called us.

Unfortuntely, for us, he is booked on the days we could do the tour.

He does say the best way is to go on Shoretrips.com and book thru them. So I'd say forget about trying his Hidden Adventures website and go thru them. We had to call Shoretrips rather than book on line because it said something about an account, etc.

He advised to call the shoretrips.com anyway and see what might be able to be worked out.

We called shoretrips and they told us it would take a couple of days to get back to us and they'd try to work out something. We aren't holding too much faith in it though.

We also found out that the tours out of Lahaina are quite different than from Kahului. Also, there is a minimum of 4 people in Lahaina, but private tours can be arranged in Kahului.

Its actually quite complicated so if you are interested, I'd advise calling shoretrips their number is 18883550220.

They are in Wisconsin and are closed on Sunday and open 9-3 on Sat. I'm not sure of their hours during the week.

Hope the rest of you have better luck with this tour than we are.:(

[txn_crzn]

disneyworld - i was just looking on shore trips and saw the kahului tour posted...before they didn't have it...but the Maui Safari Jeep Tour and Hike sounds like the tour Arnold offers...but now they are charging $156 per person, but at least its only a 2 person minimum.

 

we've decided that's a little too much for us to spend, so we're opting to tour around maui on our own. i hope you're able to work out something for this tour! good luck!