The winter tradition started in New York has been to escape the winter for a week or so. The past few years, we went to Costa Rica and Barbados so we were once again looking at the Caribbean. Flights were expensive though and out of curiosity my travel partner decided to check the prices for Hawaii. Shockingly it was cheaper than for the Caribbean… Many of our friends visited away in 2014 and they all loved it. It was on our bucket list too but under the section “very far, probably too expansive”. We didn’t think twice and book the tickets; the rest of the organization would come later. And it would come much much later; we in fact procrastinated until the very last minute (and past it). Our flight is a direct NYC-Honolulu but we’re not that interested in Oahu. We want to spend time on the big Island (Hawaii) and on Kauai based on our friends’ recommendation. We’ll finally decide to keep only Hawaii to avoid rushing from one place to the other all the time; after all it’s a vacation not a marathon. And we can always come back to give Kauai all the attention it deserves. The final plan is to spend 6 days in Hawaii and 2 and half in Oahu. We want to experiment with AirBnb also since we plan on using it from time to time during the big trip. We’re doing all this at the last minute and we struggle to find accommodation but worse, a car to rent. We try all the agencies and everything is sold out until January first. Luckily, my very resourceful travel partner will find a European website selling voucher. It’s the best we can find and we can only hope they’ll have a car for us when we arrive there.
Packed and ready, it’s now time to endure the 12 hour flight from New York to Honolulu. We fly with Delta and as usual it sucks. These cheap bastards consider it as a domestic flight… a 12 hour domestic flight! And because of that, there’s no food and all the new movies are for sale. You can buy food; it’s just small, not good and expansive. Talk about milking your customers. The flight is event-less and we arrive on time. We have a 2 hour layover in Honolulu since we go directly to the big island. We played it safe but we know there’s a flight leaving in an hour and we rush a bit to see if we can catch it. Sadly for us, it’s full. New Year is a very very busy season here we discover ;) We have no option but wait. Hopefully the flight from Honolulu to Hilo, on the East side of Hawaii, is not even an hour. On top of that we hope to get some nice aerial views of the islands. We won’t be disappointed. We’re too high when we pass over Maui to see much but arriving in Hawaii is a treat. It’s our first view of the big island and all we see are two enormous mountains circled by clouds. The mountain tops are clear and dark and the clouds give the impression to wrap themselves around the mountains. The closest one is the mythical Mauna Kea and the further away is Mauna Loa. We’re on the right side of the place so we get to enjoy the view as the plane is flying down along the East coast. As we get deeper, we see that under the sparse clouds, it’s green, very green! After these long hours seated in planes, it’s a very nice welcome treat. We quickly arrive in Hilo and just before getting to the gate, we pass by President Obama’s plane. As is tradition, he’s spending Christmas with his family in his home town. Maybe we should have coordinated with him to hitch a ride… another time maybe. The terminal in Hilo is half outside. It’s like a regular terminal, except instead of windows to the side, there’s nothing. I love tropical islands! It’s so much better to get fresh air right out the plane! We retrieve our car, relieved that the voucher was legit, and drive to our AirBnb host. It’s not far from the airport and it’s for the better because we’re dead. It’s not even 10pm but we’ve been traveling for 16ish hours so we just unpack and go to sleep.