Planes and perfect trip to Hawaii

It was the perfect vacation that nearly crashed on the runway when Aloha and ATA airlines went belly-up just weeks before our departure.

Not sure which airline we had used, I casually mentioned the airlines bankruptcy to my husband after hearing about it on the news. His response was not so casual. We had not one – but two sets of airline tickets with those companies for our long-planned trip to Hawaii with the oldest son and his wife.

Hubby spent the next several days on the phone with airline ticketing agents, the credit card company and anyone else he thought might help us get our money back and new flights arranged.

A week later he emerged from his panic – our flights finalized and another day in Hawaii added. The day of our departure, we thanked our daughter for taking us to the airport, turned to check in at the counter and realized my husband had left his wallet with his identification on the shelf at her house. She saved us with a quick round-trip dash home to get the wallet for us.

I quit fuming, calmed down and began breathing quietly – only after we dropped our suitcases on the bed at our resort.

We chose the perfect island to begin our adventure – the big island of Hawaii in the county of Hawaii in the state of Hawaii. The airport had no walls, the registration desk at the resort had no door, only a warm welcoming desk clerk with a living room setting and formal Victorian chairs for the Internet surfers. We began the day with tropical breezes as we ate breakfast around the dining table on the balcony surrounded by colorful birds and flowers – framing our view of the ocean.

It was a good thing breakfast was leisurely – the Energizer Bunny whom I married had plenty of plans for our 10 full days in the 50th state – most of which we achieved, including renting a four-wheel drive vehicle to climb the hair-pin turns on the gravel road to the highest peak of Mona Kea where brisk winds and freezing temperatures maintained pockets of snow at this site for observatories and telescopes for 11 different countries. Tour books recommend winter clothing. My husband dressed for the Arctic, I wore a couple long-sleeved shirts.

By that afternoon we re-entered the tropics surrounding Rainbow Falls and a forest of banyan trees … or is that one banyan tree? I could not figure out where one tree began and the other one ended. In the city of Hilo we found a quilt show of the modernized version of traditional Hawaiian appliqued quilts, photographed the gold overlaid statue of a famous Hawaiian King and the huge brilliant orange flowers at the top of the African tulip tree. Before we returned the rental, we discovered lava beds including those covered with a tropical form of graffiti: white stones arranged on black lava to spell out “Suzie loves Tommy.”
In search of souvenirs and sundries, the informative clerk pointed us to the ubiquitous WalMart where we found Hawaiian coffee, clothing, plants and trinkets – and the staff dressed in Hawaiian style shirts. Casual, colorful, floral clothing dominated every store and business we visited.

For some reason – maybe because we switched islands and visited touristy places – we watched a lot of hula dancers and demonstrations on how to tell the hula story about wanting to go fishing by the sea. Although the airports no longer greet guests with leis, we received our share of floral and shell leis (necklaces) from the resorts we visited and the Polynesia Cultural Center.

My husband looks really good in a necklace of flowers. He looked cute wearing his coffee grower’s straw hat and kind of funny when we added the braided band of palm fronds with the fish made palm fronds bopping above it.

I chose to look funny – I wore a long-sleeved white shirt when I went snorkeling around the coral reef seeking a face-to-face encounter with colorful fish. I preferred being a pale face to procuring a painful sunburn.

We put all of that aside when we took a tour to the sunken ship Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Soberly we discovered a family name on the wall of the deceased and watched the tears of oil bubble up from the ship creating a colorful sheen on the water. The tour guides used every minute of travel time reviewing the state’s history and pointing out many things including where the filming takes place for “Lost”, “Jurassic Park” and “Blue Lagoon.”
Other than the failure of the airlines to provide travel and the closing of the Volcano National Park, the trip went as planned and then some. As my daughter-in-love said, “I feel so spoiled – in a good sort of way.”

Spoiled and tired, we returned home and settled down to sort out our pictures and our memories of the perfect trip to the Pacific.


Posted

in

by