Day 1 and 2 Hawaii

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Hi to family and friends on our Travel Blog email list.

As many of you already know we have embarked on a trip to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary…January 6^th..to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. We came here in 1998 for our 25^th anniversary so decided to , ‘sort of’, retrace our steps.

We left home on Monday morning NZ time heading by car to Auckland. Joy drove the Trax while I ventured forth in Christine’s little yellow Holden Cruze that has been with us since she went back to Germany about 5 years ago. Christine and her partner Marcus are coming back for 6 weeks and arrive the day after we left for Hawaii…we repositioned the car for them to use on their ‘tiki tour’.

Caught up with family in Auckland on Tuesday and headed out to the airport in the Cruze, all loaded up with our gear……going to park it up at the airport for Christine and Marcus to pick up when they arrived on Wednesday. All that part went reasonably smootly….got into the terminal and left the car keys at a storage outfit at departures so that they could pick them up. Had taken a few photos to send to Christine showing where the car was and the docket for the keys and sent them but it was obvious they hadn’t been looked at because of the system that we use…they were obviously on their way from Germany and out of contact.

Have to admit I worried about it all the way to Honolulu and tried to ring her on the What’s App at least 3 times with no success.

After depositing the car keys at the outfit looking after them we headed just down the check-in area and few metres to Hawaiian Airlines and joined a huge queue and then listened to a repeated message over the loud speakers announcing that due to a computer malfunction check-in had been suspended. That was about 8.30pm so still plenty of time…..or so we thought!! We waited and waited and waited (you get the message eh!!!) Airline staff started handing bottled water out to the about 250 people queueing up and you knew then we were in for the long haul. Weren’t too worried for an hour or so but as time dragged on and we got to know everyone else standing around us, we started to get a bit concerned as we had a connecting flight from Honolulu to Maui to catch. Departure was originally 11.30pm and it soon became obvious that wasn’t going to happen. A big cheer finally went up around 11pm and everyone in the queue clapped loudly and things started to move. In typical customer service fashion, Hawaiian Airlines had 3 staff on check-in duty to deal with the huge numbers!!!! However we did at least start moving….SLOWLY…towards the check-in desks and eventually two more staff arrived….thank goodness. Departure was pushed out to 01.30am on Wednesday morning and our connecting flight to Maui was starting to look precarious.

We eventually lifted off just before 01.30am and settled in for the nearly 9 hour flight to Honolulu. The Captain announced that it had been the whole of the international airline booking system, Sabre, that had crashed and said he would try to make up some time….weren’t sure how they could do that but we finally landed around 10.30am Hawaiian time, only about an hour later than scheduled so he must have had the pedal to the metal all the way….can’t say that we noticed!!!!

Unfortunately all the standing around in the check-in queue had really badly affected Joy’s back so by the time we got to Honolulu she was really struggling. We had paid extra to get what HA called ‘extra comfort’ seats with plenty of legroom and believe me, they were great….could stretch right out as we had about 3 metres clear in front of us……well worth the extra fee.

Flight went OK and we both managed a little bit of light dozing before arriving at Honolulu. Man, what a route march from our landing gate to the baggage claim area at Honolulu airport, it really did Joy’s back in…..but we went through immigration where they asked everything except our undies size and them customs which was non-existent…they only stopped people who had big packages etc. so we breezed through that and headed on another route march to the domestic terminal. At least we only had to carry out carry-on bags as our cases went to the ‘transfer luggage’ point right outside customs as we’d been checked right through to Maui at Auckland. Turned out to be plenty of time to catch our connecting flight even after enduring their security checks that included taking our shoes off. Joy, of course, set everything off like a Christmas tree but the security staff were really nice, not totally rude and officious like we struck on our last trip through Los Angeles a few years ago. As luck, or more probably good planning, would have it our travel agent, Karen Smith in Waipukurau, had changed our connecting flight to one an hour later several weeks ago saying that she though the original flight might be a bit tight…..think she must have had a premonition maybe….but it turned out to be a good move. We met a family that we had spoken to in queue in Auckland, on our Maui flight and they said they had missed their connecting flight after we landed late…the same flight that we had originally been booked on, and managed to get rescheduled on the same flight as us.

Arrived on Maui…big long flight….20 minutes and after getting our cases headed to the rental car offices. Another queue highlighting some incredible inefficiencies. There would have been a minimum of 30 customers in the queue at Thrifty/Dollar rentals.. we got there by tram…the whole hour and a quarter we were queueing and the same number when we left…3 staff working…..total of 10 desks available for use….and a booking in system that took at least 15 minutes for each customer. We finally made the front and their computer system starting playing up. God Bless America!!!! Finally got processed and went to the massive rental car pick up area where we had been told to take any car in Row 3 that had keys in it…..NO CARS in row 3 or any other rows. Staff said ‘Oh just wait…more cars will arrive’ and eventually one did, a Ford compact a bit like our Ford Mondeo. After going through another processing point that checked out the car we had taken and registered that into their system we headed off, using my trusty old TomTom GPS that I had downloaded USA maps into and brought with us…..Yeah I know….Google maps would have worked on our phones but their cars don’t seem to have Android Auto or Apple (whatever) in them and I still like my TomTom’s way of doing things.

Decided to head straight to our hotel in Kehei on the other side of Maui as it was now after 4pm and we were both absolutely stuffed. 30 minute drive…no accidents with driving on the wrong side of the road!!! And got to the Maui Banyan, a huge condominium hotel system. Book in was easy but have to say we were underwhelmed with the facility once we got to our room…didn’t really live up to the write up that our travel agent sent us (and we will make sure that she hears about that…not her fault but the info she has just isn’t totally accurate. Very comfortable room, no issues with that at all but more like a very small ‘studio’ unit than a condo…not even an electric jug to make a cuppa for breakfast, just some useless thing for brewing coffee that didn’t seem to want to work anyway. Had a toaster and a microwave, couple of mugs and, believe it or not, 2 plasticky type dinner plates and a couple of small bowls. No decent storage for cases, but a smallish wardrobe. Anyway, in true kiwi fashion we just make do.

By the time we unpacked the car, then unpacked our cases it was getting on for 6pm and as we were both starving, eaten nothing since the rather terrible breakfast food on the plane at about 8.30am, so wandered down the road a wee bit past several restaurants that were all full to overflowing with huge, yes you guessed it, queues of people waiting for tables…they were all the same…except a smallish Subway in the nearby shopping centre so that was our dinner and very welcome it was too. Did a little basic shopping at a nearby convenience store for bread, milk and some drink and headed back to the hotel and an early night.

People, don’t ever complain about the price of food at home..$10 US for a loaf of wholegrain bread, $6US for a small tub of butter, $3US for a 150ml bottle of milk (very small..just for the cuppa), $6US for a very small jar of jam and, yes, I know it was a convenience store, bit like our dairy but the price of food was diabolical. Didn’t dare think about the NZ$ conversion. Softdrink reasonably cheap though!!!..so some winners.

We hit the sack early as could hardly stay awake and for all its faults the bed in the room was just wonderful and we both had the best nights sleep we have had for a long time…but boy oh boy, we needed it.

That was the end of our day 1 away and the end of our second January 3^rd…we go back a day and an hour, exactly the same time difference as going to Rarotonga.

Wednesday here, January 4^th and after a slowish start, a breakfast of sourdough English muffins, fresh fruit and a cuppa in our room we headed out in the car mid morning to Lahaina….up the coast a few ‘miles’ from Kihei intending to take in the town, a really lovely old whaling town right on the seafront…we stayed at Lahaina on our 1998 trip…but didn’t listen to the lady on the TomTom properly and missed a turn so headed to Walmart in Kahalui where the island’s airport is and did some shopping.

Now here’s where the good old Yanks have it over us…electronics are cheap as!!!! 65inch full smart TV, Phillips brand $399US, a well specced HP laptop I5 processor and 250SSD etc, just under $300US….and NO we didn’t buy anything like that. However Joy did get a few trinkets for the grandchildren etc. Walmart is like the Warehouse on huge steroids..they have everything including full grocery…again the prices just knocked us over. However some things are cheap even when you convert back to NZ$, Gillette razor blades for my Fusion5 razor..half the price of home even doing the conversion…pack of 20 (which you can’t even buy at home) and Joy got some of the blades she uses to do whatever ladies do with blades for really sharp prices. (Would have loved to have been able to fit a TV and laptop in the cases!!! 😊)

After Walmart headed to Lahaina and some retail therapy at the big outlet shopping centre there….got what are apparently some bargains at Addidas and the Sketcher shop. Then got a park and wandered through the centre of the town to see the huge Banyan tree, touted to be the oldest and biggest in the world…covers the equivalent of about a whole town block. Also just wandered around for a bit window shopping etc. Hopefully some photos will download to this at the bottom the page)

The programme for the evening was the take in the Sunset at the beach over the road from the hotel so Joy could get some photos so we headed back to the hotel from Lahaina later afternoon and then over the road for the Sunset….it starts about 5.45pm and goes quite quickly and then it is completely dark by 6.30pm…almost exactly like we get in Rarotonga. Hopefully again, some photos will download to this.

After photos we walked down to the ‘Coconut Fish Café’ and had some lovely Tacos for dinner before heading back to the room.

So that’s our second day away. Joy is sitting at the table ‘mapping’ out the programme for tomorrow so onwards and upwards.

Love to all the kids and grandchildren at home…Love you all and YES, we are having a great time.

Watch out for the next ‘exciting’ edition of the ‘olds’ escapades in the next day or so.

Mahalo from us.

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