We decided to have a decent schedule ready in advance so as to not waste too much time deciding on things to do while we were there. Tentatively we had Thursday evening to land, get to the hotel and figure out where things were to get a good idea of how to proceed. Friday was to be orientation and some sightseeing with the freebie vouchers from the travel agent. Saturday was started with an early hike up the Diamond Head crater followed by a 2 hour reprieve and then another hike a few miles into the rainforest to see a waterfall and then back to the hotel where we anticipated being thoroughly wiped out. Sunday was free so we would rent a car and travel around the island. Monday was started a little later with a horseback ride followed by a brief lunch and then an ATV (quad) ride then a few hours free in the afternoon. Tuesday was travel day to get back to Los Angeles so there were no other plans there.
With that schedule in mind we traipsed down to the local Auto Club office to chat about tickets and packages. We ended up with a package that ran a bit shy of $1200 for airfare and hotel for 5 nights. After signing up for that it took a few long weeks of waiting for the tickets and the trip. The tickets finally arrived with assorted vouchers for free meals and discounts to various activities, all wrapped in a nice faux leather pouch. How posh!
Waiting for the tickets to arrive allowed us time to scour the internet for
a few activities we wanted to do. I had settled on an ATV ride in the
rainforest while Laurie was intent on a horseback ride. We found a site that
offered what we wanted and a few other interesting items.
When it was all said and done we had signed up for a 2 hour horseback ride
followed by a 2 hour ATV ride for one day and another had a hike up a steep
crater followed by another hike deep into a rainforest in the afternoon.
Thursday -departure day- rolled around and Laurie went to work
for a few hours while I did a few last minute preparations. Everything was
packed and we were ready to go. The flight was scheduled to leave at 1800 so my
trusty friend Steve picked us up shortly before 1600 and drove us the 15
minutes to LAX.
We get in line to check in our bags amidst the hollering of a couple of very
loud Hawaiian kids. The parental units didn't seem too concerned with the
noise, initially I wasn't either until I glanced at the monitors and saw that
our flight was delayed by 90 minutes. Sh!t! This could become a very long wait,
the initial two hours and 90 minutes on top of that for good airline measure!
On the upside, I didn't know how right I was.
Security wasn't a big deal, the swabbed the luggage for traces of explosives and I wondered if they'd pick up nitroglycerin as a heart medication if we were so equipped. That question unanswered left us walking towards the gates to appropriate a couple of seats that would make us feel comfortable for the next few hours. Since we were in the airport no such seats were available so while Laurie opened a book I walked about and perused the inventory in the tax free store, the book store, the trinket store, Starbucks, Burger King, another trinket store and finally headed for the restrooms and went back to the sorry excuse for a seat.
The next surprise before the trip had even started was that as the airplane taxied in to the gate they realized that a faucet was broken. FAA rules being what they are, they won't let anyone on the plane until that's corrected. Once you're on the plane you WILL NOT leave until you have reached your destination! This goddamn faucet tacked on another hour on the boarding time!
The plane, a Boeing 767 of older vintage had decent legroom but not enough for a five hour flight across the ocean, but we managed as we were pretty excited to finally be on the way. The flight was on time and we landed at the Honolulu airport about 0130 Los Angeles time, we were beat by that point but the local time was three hours behind so it was only 2230 there. We were met by one of the Pleasant Hawaiian employees who took us down to a van he had waiting and drove us straight to our hotel where we checked in and got some sleep.
Friday -sightseeing day- started early. We had to get up around 0600 local time to be ready at 0700 for a shuttle to pick us up and take us to a free breakfast where Pleasant Hawaiian wanted to pitch activities for us to purchase. We enjoyed the breakfast which was a decent sized portion of eggs, potatoes and ham topped off with something similar to grapefruit juice, gava guava or pava juice. Something like that. It didn't taste bad, but I wanted to get on with it.
Since we already had most of our activities planned the only thing we went for was a Luau since we had a $60 discount coupon for it. The Luau was held at Paradise Cove which is located at the Southwestern part of the island. Activities there included hula dancing and lessons for those who weren’t familiar, pictures with parrots and other exotic but domesticated animals, wood carvings of various Gods including the Big Kahuna, a native fishing contest. Towards the end there was a large dinner with a pretty good stage show with several different dances and musical numbers that with song and dance explained the history of the Polynesian islands and their inhabitants. Did I mention the free Mai-Tai’s?
I jump ahead of myself, the Luau was actually the last thing we did that night, before that we went to Maui Divers Jewelry and saw the process for creating gorgeous jewelry out of hard to get petrified plant life in the bottom of the ocean. Very interesting except they had a huge push for buying jewelry after the tour, a little overbearing if you ask me.
Hilo Hattie’s is a large store which caters mainly to tourists, they sell all sorts of aloha shirts, macadamia nuts, coffee’s and various other items. I picked up some nice aloha shirts for myself and we also got a free coffee cup along with our purchases. Yay!
Saturday -hiking day- was spectacular from the get-go! We got up early and got a quick breakfast and then headed back to the hotel to wait for the van to pick us up for the hike up the Diamond Head Crater. Michael, the tour guide, was very knowledgeable and told us all about the history and fauna of the crater starting from when it was a barely solidified rock to when the military used it for peering into the horizon until its current use as a tourist attraction. We climbed the hill slowly and stopped a few times for the fat people to regain their composure in the 88 degree heat and took a slightly longer break before climbing the 99 steps up to the pitch black 200’ tunnel through the mountain and up the spiral stairs to the upper level of the bunker, then we walked through a small hallway and out through a ‘window’ in the bunker to stand on the outside of the rim of the crater. A small winding path took us around and up towards the very peak of the crater where another lookout spot was placed by the military a little before WWII. That particular spot gave us a gorgeous view over Hanauma Bay to the east and Waikiki and Honolulu to the west. This was of course followed by a slightly easier trek down the same path we came up.
A few hours later (after lunch) we followed up to the mornings hike with a trip to the other side of the Pali lookout and walked up the old Pali highway which hasn’t been in use since 1961 or so. From there we turned onto a small trail climbing up the mountainside and got a splendid view down the valley over a few houses and golf courses, a landscape that probably looked the same for the last few thousand years (save for the houses and golf courses naturally). The tour guide, Jonas, was a biology major at the local university and was very knowledgeable in the history and fauna of the area we ventured into. He wasn’t even local, he was from Sweden and had lived on the Island of Oahu for a short three years while studying at the University. He picked up the tours to supplement his income about a year back and provided plenty of entertainment with quick wit and equally entertaining accent.
The hike took us a couple of miles up the mountainside and culminated at a nice tall waterfall that left the water in a small pond before it trickled down the side of the mountain into the wilderness below us. A few nervous people asked about bugs and snakes but to everyone’s relief the Hawaiian Islands only have one species of snake and it’s not dangerous to humans. Bugs, very few, some mosquitoes and flies but as prone to insect bites as I am, I never got one during the week there.
We spend about 45 minutes at the waterfall for pictures and chatting and about the time we were about to leave Laurie and I chatted up a local who came up with his dogs. We enjoyed his company on the way down the mountain back towards the van which took us to the Pali lookout where we got another amazing view over a good part of the island including the areas we had just climbed and a taste of the extremely hard wind gusts pelting the side of the mountain.
At the end of the day we were dropped off back at the hotel and had a few more hours to kill so we decided to walk around and find something to eat. We had finally decided that Taco Bell would really satisfy our tastes and walked to where we thought we had seen one. This took a couple of hours and put us within a block of Taco Bell, but being a little turned around we didn’t see it nor remember the exact location so we walked back and hit up the 24hr Jack in the Box for their spectacular burgers.
Sunday -driving day- was exciting as we had rented a little Nissan sentra to drive around the island. We started out early by heading down to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor which was a good thing. They open the free exhibit at 0800 but we were there an hour early and were still about 50 people behind the front of the line. As we waited for the clock to strike 8 we witnessed several taxis and tour buses drop off hundreds of people behind us.
The memorial started out easy enough, we were walked through the entrance where attendants (Navy and some volunteers) handed us cards with the number ‘1’ on them, with those in hand we were herded into a small theatre where we were shown a movie that outlined the political events that led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the emphasis seemed to be on emotion, presumably to put us in a donating mood.
After that we exited the theatre and handed our little #1 cards to an attendant who then let us on a boat that took us to the memorial itself.
What we found out was that they shuttle people to the memorial and pick up the previous group at the same time so being the first group there gave us more time with less people crowding it. It was amazing to stand a few feet over a large battleship sitting on the bottom of the ocean with over a thousand people still buried in it, still leaking oil.. I think I got some decent pictures of it though.
After the Arizona Memorial we hopped on the freeway and headed north and although it was a daylong trip during which we stopped at many places and experienced tropical rainstorms, gorgeous empty beaches only used by locals, misty clouds hanging over the mountain tops, little tourist towns like North Shore, the snorkeling paradise of Hanauma Bay and mystical little islands barely off the coast there still isn’t much to say about the trip. It’s something that really has to be experienced as putting it in words would take too long and still not grasp the feeling of being there.
On the upside, the Nissan was abused the entire day and still got 30mpg over the 255 trip across and around the island.
Monday -Kualoa Ranch- is where movies like Jurassic Park and Godzilla have been filmed and we were taken there by bus after breakfast to get on a horse for 2 hours. Not having been on a horse for many years it proved to be a surprisingly uncomfortable couple of hours. We were taken up a few gorgeous paths around the south valley of Kualoa Ranch (privately owned by the Morgan family) through a little water, past a lot of cows grazing and saw part of the Jurassic Park set, Godzilla set and a village identical to the 1000s of years old Hawaiian villages. Cool to see but not all that impressive. On the way back towards the stables we got caught in a nasty rainstorm which soaked us thoroughly, luckily I had brought a plastic bag to wrap my camcorder in so it was kept safe. Moments later the warm breeze and sunlight won over the rain and started the task of drying us out and we were back at the stables.
After a surprisingly good ranch-provided lunch the next activity was waiting for us, the 2 hour ATV ride. Laurie has her M1 license but had never been on a quad before, it took her about 20 seconds to get the hang of these semi automatic machines and we were saddled up and tore through the wilderness in search for… well.. nothing other than a fun time. The first hour had us suffer through much of the same territory we rode through in the morning and with people that were obviously not too excited about riding the quads. After the first hour we were back to the basecamp and I was wondering what happened to the second hour when they told the 2hr riders to park in a different spot. When everyone was weeded out it was only five of us left for the long ride and we took off.
This ride took us out to the southern valley which was less open field and more rainforest, there were trees everywhere with small creeks, clearings and as always a spectacular view once we were high enough on the mountain.
We saw wild boars, cows, kittens and chickens roaming around, we climbed steep inclines with muddy water running down the side and crossed narrow trails with steep dropoffs on the sides.
The guide stopped a couple of times for picture opportunities and then asked “there are three ways out of here, easy, medium and hard, which one would you like” and each time we replied unanimously “hard”.
This second hour seemed to run by in no time, Laurie and I wasted no time going straight through any mudpuddle that appeared in front of us. There were plenty of wheelies, riding on the sidewheels and sliding going on and everyone had smiles from ear to ear during these escapades.
A funny story the guide told us while at a picture stop was of the young military guy who after being told in the beginning of the tour that they were not allowed to chase any animals still chased after a cow, well, cityslicker that he was, he didn’t notice that this ‘cow’ had no udders! After running for a little while the ‘cow’ turned on a dime and put his head down and faced the ATV which at the point of impact stopped dead and threw off this young recruit. The ‘cow’ then proceeded to step up to the recruit and snort angrily and the guy took off running. The poor guides couldn’t laugh as they were afraid of lawsuits but they did send him back to basecamp and had a spectacularly funny story to tell around lunch that day.
I think the recruit learned the hard way that if it doesn’t have udders, it’s a bull. Hehe.
Once we returned to the camp we were covered in mud and from people’s comments it was fairly obvious that they knew we had taken the 2hr ATV ride. I even had cow dung on my camcorder! After a brief wait and restroom call we headed down to the tourbus for the trip back to the hotel.
I am glad that this was the last thing scheduled on the trip, this was so much fun that we put a 6 hour ATV ride on the wishlist for them at Kualoa Ranch. We’d probably go to another island just for an ATV excursion just like this!
After a quick shower and change we walked down to the beach for a few hours of soaking in the warm pacific waters and then had a bite to eat and headed for bed.
Tuesday -departure day- was made real simple thanks to the people at Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays. At 0845 a porter came up and got our bags and we left for breakfast. As we came back and waited for the van to take us back to the airport the bags appeared and were stowed in the back of the van and off we went. At the airport we had to check the bags for fruits and other items that aren’t allowed and then the waiting game began again. Once the plane landed and got cleaned we got on and hoped for an uneventful long flight back to Los Angeles. Sadly the cheap bastards wanted $5 for headsets to listen to the movie which we declined so Laurie settled with a book and I reclined the seat for some well deserved sleep.
The plane landed 5 long hours later and we got picked up by my roommate and taken back to the house. Some slight unpacking and to bed we went with our heads filled with a lifetime worth of great memories. We are definitely going back!
The picture gallery