2015/03 Hawaii trip - Travel to Hawaii |
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Dear All,
This is the story of our trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. We began planning a camping trip back around Christmas, but we soon found that all the campervan rental companies had closed down in the last year, so we started looking for a small cottage to rent. “Two acres of rainforest” quickly caught my eye, and although I must have looked at dozens, I kept coming back to that one, as the price was right and it had no more than we needed. I found an available block of 13 nights that worked for us and booked it on Christmas Day.
Tuesday February 24th
Finding flights that would get us there at a reasonable hour to pick up the keys was more problematic. The only way we could do it, without spending a night at a hotel or airport lounge, was to take the 5 am Horizon Air shuttle from Bellingham to Seattle. So, we went to bed early and were up at midnight, crossing the border into the USA a couple of hours later and rolling into Bellingham’s new and cheap parking lot just after three. I’d been a bit skeptical about the advertised “24 hour shuttle”, but the bus pulled up behind us before we’d even unloaded – impressive! We had to wait a little while for the airport security guys to get all their scanners powered on, but soon we were on our way.
After breakfast in Seattle we were flying to Honolulu on Hawaiian Airlines, the only American carrier still serving free meals on domestic flights. The flight was just over five hours though we got two hours back because of the time zone change. We had to sign a declaration that we weren’t bringing anything live into the islands, though nobody looked at the declarations and the agriculture desk in Honolulu was unstaffed. In fact, the whole place looked unstaffed and Sandie had to ask directions from a pilot. As we had a few hours to kill, we walked to the inter-island terminal in a pleasant 80 degrees. We sat and dozed for a couple of hours at the gate while zebra doves wandered around our feet looking for crumbs.
Honolulu is on the island of Oahu, which is home to Pearl Harbour, Waikiki Beach, and Hawaii 5-O. We were more interested in volcanoes, waterfalls, and gardens, so our last hop was to Hilo on the Big Island. Hawaii is the name of the island chain, and the state, and our destination, so to avoid confusion everyone just calls it the Big Island. It is, in fact, twice the size of all the other islands put together.
The inter-island service is run just like a bus-line, with most passengers having no luggage and showing up minutes before takeoff. We flew past the islands of Molokai, Lanai, and Maui, and landed in the evening at Hilo on the windward side of the Big Island. The island is in the tropics but gets the cooling benefits of the trade winds. Along with the cooling comes the rain and Hilo gets over 100 inches a year, even more then we do in Hope.
The island is a triangle with ninety mile sides, and its centre is dominated by two enormous volcanoes which rise to over 13000 feet. The west side of the island, known as the Kona-side, is in their rain shadow and is almost a desert; it has the sunshine, beaches, resorts, hotels, and tourists. Hilo-side has the university and government; the local joke is that the only thing flowing to the east is tax money.
We picked up an almost-new little Chevy Sonic and bought enough food at Walmart for dinner and breakfast. Typically for the tropics, there was little twilight and it was suddenly dark. We briefly grappled with loading stuff into our two-door car until Sandie realized that the fancy black trim at the top of the rear windows was actually a door handle!