Our Hawaiian Adventure Begins
Christina and I are spending the week in Hawaii right now. We often joke that we’d make the most hilarious contestants on The Amazing Race because while we love traveling, traveling doesn’t exactly return the sentiment. I think we’d make a fantastic team though, and at minimum provide some great comedic relief for viewers.
Christina’s the smooth-talking, patient one who has all the time in the world for ticket agents and reservationists, while I’m direct and straight-to-the-point, just wanting quick answers so we can move on to our next destination until… PALM TREE (think “SQUIRREL!” from Up)… and suddenly I have all the time in the world to take photos mid-race and soak in the experience. She’s exactly the opposite – ready to keep moving rather than noticing everything around her. It’s comedy gold, honestly. We have a blast together and even remarked at day’s end how awesome it was that we didn’t fight… not once (but that’s just us). We’re patient with each other and balance each other out perfectly. So with that setup, here’s how our race officially began this week.
While printing our timeshare certificate the night before departure, I discovered a mistake… a BIG mistake. The certificate had us arriving at the Maui timeshare on the 20th, but we’d been planning for the 13th all along. We didn’t think it would be a big deal, so we called the timeshare to let them know about the error. Unfortunately, their offices were closed until 7am the following morning. Our plane was departing at 9:30am, so things were about to get interesting.
We stayed up until just past midnight and called the timeshare office the moment they opened (while driving to Christina’s parents’ house, who were taking us to the airport). The first person Christina spoke with basically told us we were out of luck – no availability or transfer credits in Maui. I told her to hang up and try someone else until we found someone more helpful. The second person was more accommodating but said they only had a timeshare on the Big Island, while our plane tickets were for Maui. After calling yet again, we finally got consistent answers/options and decided we’d better take the Big Island timeshare so we could at least vacation somewhere.
Upon arriving at the airport, the Hawaiian Airlines representative greeted me without even a hint of a smile. When I explained our travel plans had changed, and we needed to rebook tickets, she gave me possibly the strangest scowl I’ve ever seen. For some reason she wasn’t grasping what I was telling her, so Christina and she spoke the same language, and I think Christina even managed to get a smile or two out of her. The rep then informed us it would cost $558 each to change our tickets. I reminded her we already had tickets to Oahu and were planning to transfer to Maui from there, so I couldn’t understand why the tickets were so expensive. After helping her figure that part out, she got the cost down to $169, and we were on our way. We were the last team to arrive at the Oakland gate, but luckily this was a non-elimination leg of the race, and we received a road block once we reached our destination.
Once aboard, we had a 5-hour flight ahead of us. I got my MacBook out and organized some files, watched an hour-long Gary Vaynerchuk video that I normally wouldn’t have time for. Life was good, though a bit more leg and arm room would have been awesome. I’m pretty sure I looked like a velociraptor trying to type on my laptop with the seat in front of me fully reclined. When we landed in Oahu, we arrived at the international terminal, meaning we had to quickly walk to the other side of the airport to catch our connecting flight to the Big Island. We walked at a good clip, and once we hit the open-air section of the airport, I was in heaven. I kept stopping to take pictures. I love being a tourist and doing all the touristy things. I got about 15 seconds to capture these before Christina urged me to keep moving. I was just happy I could photograph my… SQUIRREL!
On the flight from Oahu to the Big Island, I snuck out my smartphone and got a great shot of Honolulu. Christina and I ended up sitting apart because of the last minute tickets, but I sat next to a helicopter pilot who now lives in the LA area. He knew all the islands and used to do helicopter tours on the Big Island so he could point out all the interesting points of interest.
Upon arriving on the Big Island, the helicopter pilot beside me pointed out the lava flows and all sorts of interesting things I wouldn’t have otherwise been aware of.
We got the car rental changed, the timeshare information somewhat sorted out, and we got some groceries for the week. We don’t yet know how we are getting off the island and where we are staying Saturday night, but we’re here. I think we may go over to Maui later in the week to connect back with our original return flight, but we’ll see how things go. Aloha! Yes, I’m that annoying tourist type. So despite our slow and comedic start, I am proud to say we’re still in the race! 😉