I know it is a little bit pretentious to think that our vacation is exciting enough that anyone would want to read such a lengthy account, but Cami made me write the blog this time, and sometimes I just keep writing and writing. So, if nothing else, enjoy the pictures! 
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A vacation in Hawai’i! What could be more exciting? Departure from the craziness and stress of real life and off to paradise. Who could ask for more? Not enough for you? Add a bit more flare to your vacation–Fly Stand-By! And do it during the busiest season–a great way to more excitement when you fly stand-by. Throw in a holiday weekend like Valentine’s Day or Presidents day, too. If you are lucky, both holidays will fall on the SAME weekend! PA’INA!! (Hawai’ian for ‘party’)
Here’s the plan: To save a little KALA (money), we decided to use stand-by tickets. My sister April works for an airline and can occasionally get us a good deal if we are willing to sit around the airport and wait for an open seat on a flight. We knew what we were getting into and we were ready to deal with the drawbacks. But we also have a secret weapon: April. She keeps close tabs on the flights for us to make sure we get where we’re going.
The vacation was scheduled to begin on Thursday the 12th. Our options were a direct flight to Honolulu from Salt Lake, or in case of a full flight, a couple flights were available through LA. But on Tuesday afternoon the Thursday flights were not looking so good. The three o’clock flight on Wednesday looked more promising, so we made the necessary arrangements with work and our babysitters and got set to leave on Wednesday at three o’clock.
Around nine o’clock Tuesday morning my mom called. The three o’clock was looking pretty packed. If we wanted to make it to Hawai’i, we were going to need to get on a plane at eleven thirty. We flew into action. Fortunately we had packed the night before, but we didn’t have the kids packed for the babysitter. Kaycee was able to head out and get to our house right away and packed up the kids for us. Right as she got there, we rushed to wait at the airport. A hurry-up-and-wait thing.
At the airport there is a process to be followed. On a flat-screen monitor your name slowly progresses toward the head of a stand-by list. As it inches along, the number of seats available steadily drops. As suspenseful and action packed as the Indy 500, you watch your name race to beat the top before the available seats plummets to zero. Our name crossed the checkered flag with 3 seats to spare. We made it on the flight…
To MAUI.
Did I mention that our hotel was on Oahu? And was for Friday night? So off we went to the wrong island, two days early, with no hotel and car reseverations. Credit cards were at the ready. We were flying with my Mom and Dad, and the four of us ended up spread throughout the cabin. Cami had to take a middle seat bu the rest of us got an aisle seat.
We arrived in Maui and began the search for a hotel. We found a couple of options in Kehei and Lahaina, ten to twenty miles from the airport and near beaches and paradise. After a few minutes of hunting for transportation, we discovered that there were no rental cars available on the entire island short of a 12 passenger van–a mere $250 per night. We heard rumor that the Uhauls on the island were also going quick. A cab would cost us $50 to $75 to Kehei or Lahaina, so we opted for something closer. The Maui Beach Hotel was only a few miles from the airport and the hotel shuttle could pick us up. No fancy beaches. No transportation. We were trapped in a diluted paradise. With no reason to stay on Maui until Friday, we scheduled a flight on Mokulele Airlines to hop over to Oahu the next afternoon.
We ate dinner at the all-you-can-eat Japanese/Sushi buffet (I love sushi!) in the hotel and then went and kicked around in moonless night of the nearby bay for a few minutes, then to bed. Well, the hotel said they were beds. The two “double” beds were arguably smaller than the dinner table at the buffet, but the table was softer. An interesting twist to the bedtime thing… My mom, in the interest of packing light, didn’t pack any pajamas, figuring they could sleep in their underwear. Apparently she didn’t think that we might have to share a room. Cami and I slept facing the wall.
Morning found us at Ihop a few block away and then back to our little slice of ocean to watch minuscule crabs scamper along the beach at an incredible pace and to poke at huge sea cucumbers in the shallows. Ahhh… Palekaiko (paradise).
After the 6 hour flight to Maui, the 18 minute flight to Honolulu was a “walk on the beach”. We got drink service, too. Immediately after the seatbelt light was doused, the flight attendants scampered down the aisle with a box of 4 ounce cups with a foil wrapper seal on top. “Water or Juice?” I’m glad they asked. The drink cups could have been mistaken for a large cup of Bleu Cheese Dressing leaving me waiting for the buffalo wings. At the end of their 16 row excursion, they returned for a second pass collecting the garbage. Ding Ding! “The pilot has turned on the fasten seat belt sign.” Moments later we were standing at baggage claim in Honolulu. I’m reminded strangely of a Shel Silverstein poem–The Quick Digesting Gink. If I recall, it goes something like this:
I’ve been caught by the quick digesting gink
And now I am dodging his teeth.
Now I am restin’ in his intestine.
Now I’m back out on the street.
Here we are waiting for our Mokulele flight and having some lunch.
Our airplane and the flight.
So there we were, quickly digested by the Mokulele Gink and preparing for another bout with the car rental gods. We had a reservation for that night, but not until 9PM, 4 hours after we arrived. We got another lucky break. At Alamo, the attendant didn’t even charge us for the extra hours–we could return the car at 9PM the next week. My mom had taken some time earlier in the day to locate a hotel for us.
We were in Hawai’i, in Honolulu, with a rental car, and a hotel for the night. And we were only down an extra three or four hundred dollars. Let’s eat.
I’m a big fan of trying new things–particularly food–and what better place to try new things than a foreign land? Well, not officially foreign, but the food selection is certainly varied. For dinner I tried Pork Lau Lau. Advertised as a dish served traditionally at a Lu’au it is some kind of fish and pork wrapped in taro leaves and cooked for an undisclosed amount of time, but long enough to turn the taro leaves into a thick green-black puree. I have little doubt that it is purely coincidence that the name of the dish so closely resembles the Hawai’ian word Lua–bathroom. Cami likened it to one of Jayci’s favorite insults: Poo Poo Platter. To be fair, it didn’t taste too bad if I didn’t actually eat the poo poo.
On the way back from the hotel, we ran into the International Marketplace, a (market)place with with we would become intimately familiar by the end of the week. A quick stop to see Waikiki Beach in the dark, and we were ready for bed. Interestingly, Cami and I were almost on a normal sleeping schedule in Hawai’i. Normally we go to bed at midnight or later (as I’m typing this, midnight is a mere twelve minutes away) and get up around 9. Hawai’i, three hours behind our norm, put us to bed at 9PM and up at 6AM. That’s why they call it paradise. Forget palm trees, oceans, and bikinis. I can sleep-in AND be on time for work!
The sleeping arrangements were considerably better that night. Though Cami and I ended up dragging a 2 inch mattress off of a well-worn sleeper sofa and camping out on the floor, my parents had a room of their own. Here’s the math: Crappy bed on floor – unclothed parents > any other bed + unclothed parents. And the floor was softer.
Other than picking up my sister from the airport to join us in our island tour, we had no plans for the following day. What to do? We decided to take a scenic drive that is apparently little known by the tourists. Round Top Road wound up around a canyon north of Honolulu and back down the other side. Not a tourist to be found (other than us, of course). It was a beautiful drive and afforded us an incredible view of the whole oceanfront from Diamond Head to the airport.
We picked up April at the airport and on the way to check into the hotel we stopped at Sam Choy’s for an expensive yet tasty dinner and a little shopping next door at Hilo Hattie’s, one of my mom’s favorite shopping spots. Check out the 400 XL floral shirt.
Finally we checked into what we hoped would be the final hotel for this trip. The Wyndham Resort was quite acceptable with kitchen, dining room, TV room, and three Lanais. The master bedroom, with king-size bed, had its own bathroom with a tub that would nearly fit the five of us. (This is purely speculation–there was no scientific exploration of this theory.) Cami and I shared a room with my sister. Again, two double beds occupied the room, each scarcely the size of a dinner table. Good thing Cami and I like to snuggle. But they were comfortable beds and it was not a bad place to stay at all. More importantly, my sister packed pajamas.
With a kitchen in the hotel room, we decided we would save some time and money by having breakfast in the hotel. One of those first nights we made a trip to the local WalMart near the Ala Moana shopping center to get some breakfast items. Apparently Super Walmart means something different in Hawai’ian than in the mainland. 6 choices of cereal and a gallon of milk is enough to turn a garden variety Walmart into a Super Walmart. We later found that the nearest ABC store had a greater selection of cereal than Walmart did. But with milk at $5.50 a half-gallon, it might have been cheaper to eat out.
As a side note, it is hard to tell which ABC store might actually be nearest to the hotel. In fact, unless you are actually standing inside an ABC store, it can be difficult to determine which ABC store might be the closest. I think there are less Starbucks stores in any given square mile in Seattle or San Francisco than there are ABC stores in an equivalent land area in Honolulu. Also worth mentioning is the occasional “Stupid Factory”. Don’t believe me? Look at the pictures.
One of the things I wanted to make sure I did in Hawai’i was go snorkeling or scuba diving. We decided to go snorkeling on the reef at Hanauma bay. Hanauma bay is actually an ancient volcano crater opened up to the ocean on one side. A large reef has formed a hundred yards or so from the beach, making for some prime calm-water snorkeling. The waves that make it into the bay break on the reef, leaving calmer water at the beach. I have never snorkled outside of a pool, and I had a really great time. We all did. Mom sat on the beach (she’s not a big swimmer) while Cami, April, Dad, and I explored the reef. Most of the water on the beach side of the reef was less than 6 feet deep, but we did find some spots out close to the break where the water was probably close to twelve feet deep. We also bailed over the reef into the rougher side for a minute. I thought it was fun, but the waves smacked us around a bit so we didn’t stick around long. I could have stayed in the water all day long. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t take my camera along for Hanauma bay, so no pictures here. I didn’t think it would be worth buying a water proof case for it because I wanted to be able to snorkel and not worry about a camera or trying to spend time setting up shots. We saw fish of all kinds, but it was only as Cami and I were heading out of the water at the end that we came across a large sea turtle. It literally swam right across our path. It was fascinating to see it.
We wouldn’t make our first trip to Hawai’i without a visit to Pearl Harbor. Sunday morning we headed that direction. We toured the visitors center for the Arizona–a battleship sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Over 1100 people died on the Arizona alone. Over 900 bodies were never recovered and are still in the ship. When we got to the visitor’s center, we got a ticket for a historical movie about the attack and ferry trip over to the Arizona Memorial, which straddles the sunken ship. From the memorial, you can look out the sides and see the ship under the water as it slowly becomes a reef. The names of all of the lives lost are on a wall in one end of the memorial. We were interested to find out that the name of the captain was Isaac C. Kidd. My grandma’s maiden name was Kidd. My mom is going to do some investigation to see if there is a relation.
Interestingly, the ship still “bleeds”. It bleeds oil–about 2 quarts a day, every day, for more than 65 years. Even as we were there, we saw constant black blobs of oil surface and drift off. It is a fascinating and sobering sight.
After the Arizona Memorial, we toured the Bowfin submarine, A.K.A the Pearl Harbor Avenger. The Bowfin went on the warpath after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I believe it sunk over 40 enemy ships. We walked through the sub and saw the forward and aft torpedo tubes, all the crew quarters and engine rooms and almost the entire sub.
Next it was off to the U.S.S. Missouri, a battleship that took part in the war. We walked through many of the areas of the ship, but I’m sure we really only saw a fraction of it. Certainly it is the biggest boat I have ever been on. The guns on the deck could fire a shell up to 20 miles with pinpoint accuracy. If I recall, they were about 16 feet long. The ship was decommissioned in 1955 and was mothballed for several years until it was modernized and put back into service in 1991 for Desert Shield and was the first ship to fire the Patriot missles. It was permanently decommissioned soon afterward and set up as a memorial in Pearl Harbor.
Sunday night we went to Germaine’s Lu’au. We caught the shuttle bus up the road from our hotel where we met “Cousin Kuhio”, our host for the ride. In Hawai’i, everyone is considered Ohana (family) and that made us all cousins. Cousin Kuhio was basically our entertainment for the bus ride and got everyone riled up and excited for the night. I think we got the best bus! Cousin Kuhio was a crackup! He got us all trained to row the bus like a boat so that when we passed other busses on the way to the Lu’au, we pretended to row past them. He made the ride very entertaining.
The Lu’au was pretty good. Dancing and fire eating and other such entertainment from several Polynesian islands. They had been roasting a whole pig in the ground all day and we got to see a couple huge guys with huge pecks pull it up. Then we had quite a feast. All-you-can-eat of all kinds of Hawai’ian food, and some other less fancy food. I finally got to try some Poi. I have always wanted to try it. It is basically Taro root mashed up into a thin, light purple-gray paste. Some people liken it to wallpaper paste. Cousin Kuhio says traditionally it is eaten with one or two fingers. If you like it, you eat it with one finger. If you don’t like it, you eat it with two fingers–one finger to put it in, the other to scoop it back out.
With the lu’au right on the beach, we got to see the sun set right over the ocean. Of course, I got several pictures.
On the ride back to the hotel, we learned that Kuhio actually only worked the lu’au two or three nights a week. He is a musician by trade and he sang several songs and played his ukulele. He even yodeled like you wouldn’t believe. He got a big tip for the night! If you ever get a chance to go to Germaine’s Lu’au, make sure you get bus 7 with Kuhio. It’s the bus with the good looking cousins. The other buses have the ugly cousins.
Monday we were up before the sun. We caught a shuttle at 6:40 to head to Diamond Head–another huge crater at the edge of the ocean and overlooking Honolulu. We heard that morning was the best time to hike it and since our sleep schedule was a little off, it wasn’t much effort to get up that early. The parking lot is inside the bottom of the crater and the hike takes you to the highest point of the crater, overlooking the ocean. The hike has several staircases, including a spiral staircase and a tunnel or two. It seems to be an old military bunker or lookout of some kind. Nonetheless the view from the top is breathtaking.
Now for a new adventure–the outrigger canoe ride. This was actually a pretty fun ride, though we only went out twice. Here’s the drill. Push a big heavy outrigger canoe into the ocean, pile in, then paddle like mad to get out through the breaking waves. We got soaked on our way out, splashing through waves crashing over the bow. Once we got out past the surfers, we turned the boat toward the shore and waited. When our guide saw the right wave coming in, he told us to row like we had never rowed before (which isn’t saying much, since we don’t find ourselves rowing an outrigger canoe in the ocean very often). Off we went heading toward shore. Before we knew it, we were moving faster than we could even paddle. We were riding a wave back to shore in the canoe. It pushed us almost all the way back into shore. Out and back twice and we were done, and soaked. They took some pictures of us and we bought a disk of the pictures, because we obviously weren’t taking any ourselves. That’s how it works in Hawai’i. Someone takes a picture of you wherever you go and then charges you $20 for a print.
The next adventure was was lunch at sea whale watching aboard a sailing catamaran. We planned ahead to make sure we didn’t get stuck in traffic. We planned too far ahead. The drive only took us about 15 minutes, getting us there at least an hour early. So we drove out another road out to a rocky shore where some fisherman were trying there luck and feeding their leftover bait to the stray cats. As we were about to head back to the car, I saw something strange way out in the water. We realized we were seeing whales spouting in the distance. Good thing we got a glimpse of some from shore, because we didn’t get lucky enough to see any from the boat. We did see several dolphins. We also saw flying fish jump out of the water ahead of the boat and go soaring off in front of us. I think we all really enjoyed the catamaran. The food wasn’t very good, but it was a cool trip. And before you ask, YES, the water really was THAT BLUE!
On Tuesday, we found our way up to the north shore by way of the Dole pineapple plantation. We spent an hour going through the hedge maze and then had a little pineapple snack. I had pineapple ice cream. Cami just had fresh pineapple. Surprisingly, of all the pineapple we ate in Hawaii, it was the worst tasting. Go figure.
Every time April is in Hawai’i, she makes a trip to Hale’iwa a little town on the north shore. (Hale is the Hawai’ian word for house. Iwa is a type of sea bird. So, Hale’iwa basically means birdhouse.) She goes to Hale’iwa to visit Matsumoto’s, a little Japanese souvenir shop. They are famous for their shaved ice and red beans. In Japan, they boil a type of red beans with sugar and use it as a treat or desert. It is popular to put ice cream and boiled red beans in a paper cone and put shaved ice with syrups on top. It was actually quite tasty. Not sure it is worth a drive to the north shore every day, but still good.
After Matsumoto’s, we headed to Waimea falls. The botanical gardens along the mile or so walk to the falls were pretty amazing. The falls, not so much. I think I was expecting more. I thought the falls were supposed to be a hundred foot drop with cliff divers plummeting off the cliffs. Apparently I was wrong. Our hike up Adam’s canyon above Layton last summer revealed a taller waterfall than Waimea. Oh well, the gardens were very cool.
For our next stop, we wanted to take a peak at the Bonsai Pipeline to see the big surf coming in. There happened to be a body boarding competition going on, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of action on the waves. Just guys bobbing up and down mostly. It was pretty cool to see 8 to 10 foot waves rolling over into such tubes. We didn’t stick around long.
Next we headed to the Hawai’i temple in La’ie. It is under renovation at the moment and has had all the paint stripped off. Because of the moist air and salt water, they have repainted the temple every 5 years for nearly 100 years. They had 19 layers of paint to strip off. My dad works with Mark Eubank, the former weather man for KSL, who is on an LDS mission in Hawai’i, so he came out to talk with us for a while. He told us about the weather in Utah (15 inches of snow on the Layton bench and a jackknifed semi on the freeway that spilled McDonald’s hamburgers all over.), the temple, and Plumeria trees, which bloom endless beautiful flowers, which traditionally were used to make Leis.
Also in La’ie is La’ie Point (some kind of strange Hawai’ian coincidence). It is a long finger of lava rock sticking out into the ocean. There are several other small islands of rock sticking up in the surrounding water. The point is made up of extremely sharp and rough lava rock. If you were to slip and fall, the term “skinned knee” would take on a whole new meaning. The waves coming in from the northern Pacific plow into these rocks with awesome force, sending sprays of water into the air, and often all over the rocks. It was a great sight to see and Cami and I went down a little closer to wait for a big one to spray us a little. We got a good spray. Then Cami left me there and a HUGE spray came up and absolutely drenched me. As we were about to leave, a rainbow splashed across the sky off shore, which meant we were all about to get wet! Before we could make it back to the car, I wasn’t the only one soaked.
We spent our last full day at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We started with another delicious buffet, and then went around to visit the many villages. There is a lot to see, and it was interesting to see the culture of the many different Polynesian islands. I think I enjoyed Samoa the best. They started fire by rubbing sticks together, they climbed a palm tree, and they peeled and cracked a coconut and made coconut milk. There was also a canoe pageant. Canoes came by with dancers from each island dressed in their traditional garb. The IMAX movie was also fascinating, and a good break from all the walking around.
We had our last shopping adventure that night over at the International Marketplace and all the many shops around Waikiki. There are a lot of ukulele shops in Hawai’i. Originally I had no intentions of buying one. By the end of the week, they were looking more enticing. Having played guitar for years, it seemed like something fun to have. Well, that last night, I ended up buying one at Bob’s Ukulele shop at 11:30PM. It is fun. I probably shouldn’t have spent so much on it, but I enjoy tinkering around on it and playing songs with the kids.
I wanted to get a chance to go play at the beach and the waves. I even considered some surf lessons, but we just didn’t get a chance. I could have gotten up early on the last day and headed out for the morning, but instead decided to get packed up and ready to go.
Now it was time to head back home. April left a couple nights before and was the very last person to get on her flight to Salt Lake. We had a lot lower priority than her and weren’t going to be that lucky. The flights were all very full. In the end, we decided to fly to the island of Kauai, then to LA, and finally on a flight to Salt Lake. We left Oahu around 5:00, if I recall. We finally waved goodbye to paradise at 9:30PM headed for LA. With a strong tailwind, we made it back to the mainland an hour early at 4AM where we waited to see if we would make our flight to Salt Lake at 6:05. It was looking a bit rocky at first, but then suddenly things opened up and we were on. Mom and Dad even got to fly first class.
Though we missed the kids, it was nice to be able to have a vacation all to ourselves. Cami and I got some great time with each other. Thanks Kaycee and Tom, Cortney and Brett, Brenda and Steve, and Margo for taking turns and keeping our kids for us so we could have this vacation.
Now I have seen Hawai’i. I definitely would like to go back, but now I’ve been to all the big tourist traps. Next, we’ll just play and relax and enjoy our time in paradise in a more low-key way.
Here’s the pics from the trip.
