Last night Kyle posted links to both her and my photos from the Hawaii vacation that we took during the second half of November. Shame on me for not writing something earlier about that trip after I finished posting my own photos. It feels like it was a long while ago now however it's good to reminisce a little about good times, so here goes.
We've been to Hawaii a few times now - this was my fourth trip with Kyle - and people often seem aghast and think that you must be loaded to be able to do it so many times. The truth is that Hawaii is an expensive place to visit and stay, but saved up some money for this trip and offset the cost by using frequent flyer miles and travelling during the off season (Hawaii's winters are still better than many of the recent summers I remember back home in the UK).
During our two week stay we spent a week each on the islands of O'ahu and Maui, with a day trip to Kaua'i (pronounced to rhyme with "Hawaii", if it helps). We stayed in Waikiki in a really great studio apartment in the Pacific Monarch, a few blocks back from the beach with a really great view of the ocean as well as the mountains. It was great to wake up in morning and be able to look out over Waikiki, and spend time having breakfast on the balcony.
Waikiki is often looked down on as not being the "real Hawaii", and it's certainly true that it's not particularly representative of the islands as a whole. It's also true that the beachfront does look like a giant stripmall. But Waikiki does have a kind of mad energy that is really fun to experience, and both Kyle and I love it.
We also found a few gems that were new to us: the nightly free hula shows on the beach front were a real eye-opener, as they featured real Hawaiian performers (both musicians and dancers) performing a variety of modern and traditional songs and hula dances. I love the fact that Hawaii has this whole traditional culture and I felt like I understood more about it after seeing these shows. There was also a great open market in Kapiolani Park (past the Aquarium) on the Sunday which featured crafts and local goods. Another treat was seeing the King's Guard at the Kings Village, who lower the Hawaiian flag each night and then perform a routine where they juggle with their rifles. Afterwards they pose for photos and when you get to hold one of the guns you realise how heavy they are. So it's pretty amazing.
(Also in the King's Village we found a small musuem of vintage Hawaiiana, including a lot of cheesy stuff from the 1950s to the 1970s. I really loved seeing that stuff! But I think that the museum was only temporary, so I don't know if it will still be there in future.)
The other great thing that we did while on O'ahu was to take two of the Robert's Hawaii tours. The first one was the Grand Circle Island Tour, which takes you by bus around O'ahu to see the rest of the island outside of Waikiki. Kyle and I had ventured into O'ahu on our previous trips so we'd seen some of the places before, but still this was really great - beyond the city the island is very green - and our driver Duke was a local Hawaiian who was able to take us to places that I think we would have had some difficulty finding otherwise. He was also able to give us lots of backstory as well as a favour of what it's like to live in Hawaii these days. Basically, it may be paradise, but if you're a regular working stiff then the wages aren't so great.
The second tour we took from O'ahu was actually a day trip to the island of Kaua'i, which Kyle really wanted to visit since she had heard so many people say that it is their favourite island. This trip involved getting up at some ungodly hour to catch a plane to Kaua'i, before getting on the bus there. The great thing about the tours though is that the Roberts people really look after you, so long as you turn up at the start. On Kaua'i we were on a small bus with a great driver called Nani, who also had lots of stories about growing up and living on the island (including stories about the storms and how things have changed over the last 40 years). She was also incredibly helpful, taking pictures of people (even when they weren't in tour group).
Kaua'i itself was really beautifu, the most lush and green of all the islands that we visited, and we were part of a great tour group that included some Australians and even an ex-pat Brit from Birkenhead. It wasn't an island that I knew much about before going there but I think it would be fun to visit for longer than a day if we ever get to go back again.
After spending a week on O'ahu, we spent the rest of our vacation on the island of Maui. This was also a new island for Kyle and me, and although we'd done some research it was still pretty much unknown territory for us both. It's always a surprise to me that in many ways each of the islands is so different from the others, both in terms of the geography (which also influences how you can get around) and also just the things that you can see there. We stayed in a condo apartment in a small development in Kihei, which suffered from a few air circulation issues but which I really enjoyed, and also felt like a good base location from which to explore different parts of the island. (Across the road there was also a great Indian restuarant called Shangrila-By-The-Sea.)
We did quite a lot on Maui: we visited the 'Iao Valley and saw the 'Iao Needle (the guidebooks make it look like an arduous hike but it's about a 5 minute walk from the carpark), visited the town of Lahaina (home of the world's second largest Banyan tree) and the Maui aquarium (expensive, but a great place to see turtles up close), and went to the summit of Haleakala to watch the sun rise over the clouds. We also had lunch at Longhi's in Wailea (expensive but well worth it) and took a trip on the Reefdancer, which is a "semi-sub" that lets you see the reef and its inhabitants without having to don snorkel or SCUBA gear.
(The Reefdancer trip was also fun because the woman diver turned out to be yet another Brit, who was mistaken for an Australian by a lot of people on the boat. When I talked to her she asked me "Which part of Australia are you from?", and I told her "The same part as you.")
We took our last Roberts tour on Maui, this time a trip on "the Road to Hana", which is actually a circular trip around the south-eastern "bulb" of Maui which passes through the sleepy little town of Hana. The guidebooks all rave about driving this road, which features many different waterfalls and other sights on the way, but both Kyle and I were glad we took the tour rather than driving it ourselves since the road is narrow (sometimes only a single vehicle wide), winding, and often yet close to the edge of high cliffs! Hats off to our driver Tai who drove us around whilst providing an entertaining commentary. I did wish a few times that we'd had more time to stop in some of the places, but the great thing about the tour was to get a chance to see so much in a single day.
Our last day in Hawaii was actually Thanksgiving, so we watched a bit of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV and then went down to the beach for an hour. It was pretty quiet and we watched a lone snorkeler and a couple of kayakers paddling around in the ocean.
In spite of having spent over 2 weeks there, we were sad to leave Hawaii at the end of the trip (although snagging first class seats with my frequent flyer miles on the way back took the edge off a little), I was already thinking about what I'd like to do next time. I think that the tours were the biggest eye-opener for me - they can be expensive, but with Roberts at least you definitely get what you pay for, plus what you're saving is your own time in Hawaii. I think in future if there is a specific activity that I want to do then I would look at seeing if there is a tour to do that activity.
So that's our Hawaiian vacation in a (rather large) nutshell. If you're interested in checking out the pictures then mine are on Flickr:
- The "best of Hawaii" album (about 112 pictures, around 5 minutes if you watch a slideshow)
- The full Hawaii album (around 270 pictures and videos, only for the committed!
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