This visit to Hawai’i was a “short” 7-day island hopping between Oahu, Maui and back to Oahu for the flight back to (then homebase) Colorado.
The trip was meant to cure my (not so self-inflicted) post-COVID post winter season restaurant managing burnout, while working for a furiously busy high end winter resort. In my multi city vacations, I usually choose a quiet destination first to decompress, but in this case I was able to find comp nights at sister hotels (one of the best perks ever while working in hospitality) at a busy detination first. In this case it was Waikiki, on the O’ahu island of Hawai’i.
My arrival was far from the peace and quiet that I really wanted, as the trip from the airport to the hotel was one hour long (also because I chose to travel via bus 20) during the rush hour. The Hyatt Regency is also located in a busy district, albeit right across from Waikiki beach. Checking in a hotel with 2 huge towers also meant that navigating inside the hotel was like going through an airport terminal. Anyways, the arrival adventures ended when I was checked in before regular check-in time and was given a top floor room with a decent view of the beach and of the city.
The one quirky and funny thing that stood out for me while having breakfast in the huge hotel restaurant was that one of the restaurant employee’s main task was to “shoo away” the tropical bird who took a liking of the sugar packets on the tables. The highlights while on O’ahu were the North shore trip taken with an organized group (with tourist trap stops like the Dole plantation, movie set locations for Lost, Jurassic Park and other famous movies), the self guided tour on the East shore (with the more quiet and raw nature beaches), and the visit to Pearl Harbor. What did really filled my heart after the bitter sweet visit to the Pearl Harbor airbase historic site was seeing the Lei Day celebration, as part of a free local festival with soul soothing music and dancing in the beautiful setting of the Kapiʻolani Regional Park, minutes away from the hotel.
Maui was far more generous when it came to the welcoming and scenic raw nature. Transportation to the hotel was almost an hour long as the Hyatt Regency is located in the resort dense Lahaina, which is 28 miles away from the Kahului airport. Thanks to the last minute efforts of the concierge team, I was still able to book a couple of tours, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The first was the Road to Hana tour, which brought us through luscious forests, near majestic waterfalls and also offered glimpses of amazing ocean views. The tour guide Damien, the “local boy” offered a candid, no-filter introspection of the locals’ view of how tourism and the economy shaped the island. On the next day, I went on a tour which included a hike on the Haleakalā volcano, which impressed me with the majestic view which resembled to the volcano being an island surrounded by water, when in fact we were on the peak of the volcano, above the cloud line. After all, the islands of Hawai’i are volcanoes perching above the ocean waters.
Being able to gaze in the distance from a top of a volcano and above the clouds which resemble an ocean on top of another ocean was simply breathtaking. Admiring sunsets and sunrises near or on the beach, came in as close seconds as highlights of my visit on the beautiful Maui island.
