Hawaii & Las Vegas 2022
This trip has been a long time coming. Like most travellers, the last two years have been full of disappointment as we counted down the weeks to booked trips that (after the first one was cancelled in March 2020) we had little faith were actually going to happen. We kept booking them in the hope we’d get the timing right, the stars would align and we would finally get to travel internationally again.
The balance payment to British Airways (BA) was due 3 weeks before this trip and with covid restrictions starting to lift around the world we took the risk of paying it. Our only obstacle being passing an antigen test the day before our departure.
Add to this uncertainty, one week before our departure day Russia invaded the Ukraine. Our travels plans could not be cancelled without losing the majority of our money, so assuming we were fit to travel this trip would be going ahead.
Day 1 - Home to London Heathrow
We carefully managed our interactions with others in the lead up to ‘Flight Day’ and we travelled down to Heathrow with nervous excitement. I still couldn’t allow myself to believe we were actually going on a travel adventure again.
We parked our car at the T5 long stay car park and took the transfer bus to the terminal and walked to the Sofitel London Heathrow T5 Hotel (it’s a short hop and skip from T5 on level 1 of the car park). We had chosen a room that included a few perks which included access to the ‘lounge’ giving us ‘free’ afternoon tea and evening canopies & unlimited drinks. Oh and breakfast.
After checking into the hotel we had afternoon tea and did the short hop & skip (10 minutes walk) to the terminal for our pre-booked antigen test. Our booking was for 5:30pm but I had seen vlogs where tests were done earlier than the booking. At 4:40pm we both had our nose pokes and Daywe’re walking back to the hotel. We were told the results would be sent via email in around 40 minutes. At 17:11 our negative results had arrived in our inboxes.
To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement! My joy was curtailed by Alan focusing my attention on needing to complete the process and upload the paperwork to VeriFLY (the app used by BA to confirm your vaccination status and test results). This was less stressful, I know how to upload documents with my phone.
All paperwork successfully upload, it was time for canopies in the lounge, unlimited lamb samosas, olives… and of course beer, wine, cocktails and soft drinks.
With all that eating we didn’t need any dinner and decided on an early night after a stressful day.
Day 2 - London to LA
The hotel was really quiet, I didn’t hear any noise from the corridor or other rooms, a perfect airport hotel.
We were awake at 4am (excited for the trip) and slowly got ready before our breakfast. It wasn’t the best of breakfasts, lots of choice but the buffet hot items were only just warm. Still, it filled a hole.
Alan took our overnight bag back to the car in the Long Stay car park and by the time he got back to the hotel I had packed up and was resting watching this week’s episode of Season 14 RuPaul’s Dragrace.
Just before 10am we decided to drop our checked luggage… this was delayed by 1 hour and 40 minutes due to problems with the luggage conveyor. Fortunately we were very early and despite the long queue to drop our bags we were still through security with 3 hours and 30 minutes to lounge crawl before our flight was due to take off.
We quickly visited the Plaza Premium Lounge (‘free’ with one of our credit cards) and decided to skip the Club Aspire Lounge for this trip (it looked busy) and went to the BA Club World T5B lounge which was a breath of fresh air after the busy Gate A section of T5! The lounge was virtually empty and delivered to seat food orders only took 10 minutes.
Several drinks and snacks later it was time to go down for boarding. Boarding was done by Groups with Group 1 & 2 called at the same time. We settled in for our near 11 hour flight LA (LAX).
We had seen comments on social media about the food service not having returned to pre-covid quality. However, the food was pretty good, the service was different with everything on one tray rather than delivered in courses, but honestly that was fine. We both had chicken & leek pie for the main meal and prawn curry for the second meal which was served an hour before landing. For the first third of the flight drink service was great but it pittered out as the crew went into hibernation mode. This didn’t stop Alan, who ensured he always had a drink in front of himself.
We arrived into LAX just a little after our scheduled arrival time and were disembarked by row number which worked really well (not a very long wait when you are in row 11).
We were quickly into border control and with no form filling (no customs cards required) or annoying machines, we were super quick through to baggage claim. With priority labelling our luggage was quickly out and within 30 minutes we were looking for the hotel shuttle.
We were staying the night at the Hyatt Regency which has free shuttles every 15 minutes. We only had to wait 5 minutes and with no-one waiting at the other terminal stops we were at the hotel in 10 minutes. After 24 hours since we got up, that soft bed was a very welcome sight! We were asleep as our heads hit the pillow.
Day 3 - LA to Kona (Big Island)
We were wide awake at 1:30am so we turned the lights on did a few travel jobs before getting up for real around 4am. We took the 5:15am shuttle to the airport. Check-in through priority was a breeze, so was security.
The next step in the process was the Safe Hawaii clearance. This process is due to end at the end of March, but for our trip it was still a requirement. We had already uploaded the documents so it should have been a simple showing of our passports. But our NHS vaccinations PDF was on two pages, two pages don’t work for the system. All vaccinations need to be shown on one page or screenshot. With some help from apps on my phone we were able to get the format correct (after a couple of attempts). It took nearly an hour to get our wristbands for entry to Hawaii.
After that hard work we really deserved a rest in the American Airways Flagship Lounge. We were welcomed at the door with a glass of champagne and guided into what was a very nice lounge with lots of choice of buffet breakfast items and cooked to order egg station.
Our flight was ready to board at 9am and as we were travelling in First Class we boarded in Group 1. The crew were attentive throughout the flight bringing us plenty of drinks. The food was a little dodgy, breakfast was a choice between a cheese omelette with sausage or fruit & yogurt. Neither were particularly nice.
For entertainment you needed to use your own device to connect to the free movie service. With the same choice as on the BA flight I opted to work on the trip report while occasionally ‘gently’ punching Alan’s arm to wake him up. It was Alan that had imposed a ‘we must stay awake’ mandate on today to ensure we got into the time zone. He was attempting to sleep from the moment we took off! Half way into the flight (after 3 hours) I got fed up with causing him pain and let him sleep.
We arrived at Kona Airport on time and made our way to wait for our luggage to transfer from the plane. It was then we remembered how warm Hawaii was! The luggage waiting area was in the shade so it wasn’t too much of a hardship. Luggage in hands we made our way to the taxi pick up area. Our original flights were a straight through run from the UK, with a couple of hours in Seattle Airport before an evening flight to Kona arriving late at night. We arranged to pick up our rental car the next day because we thought we would be too tired to drive. These flight arrangements got several times with us finally settling on a morning flight from LAX, but our rental car arrangements remained as a next day pick up at the hotel.
There was no queue for the taxi and we were soon being entertained by our Hawaiian taxi driver, who was super friendly and updating us on what had been happened on Big Island since our last visit. It was a quick 20 minutes drive from the airport to our hotel in Kona ($30).
We were staying at the Courtyard King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel for 7 nights. We had stayed here on our last visit, it’s location perfect for the Kona Brewer’s Festival and for the Kona restaurants. It is was showing its age on our last visit and there had been no refurbishment since then. Really it wasn’t worth the advertised daily rate, but with the recovery of tourism following the covid restrictions hotels have been able to set their own pricing! On top of the daily room charge there was also a resort fee, which in my opinion was a rip off considering they weren’t offering daily room servicing! Or as it turned out when we requested our room to be serviced any room servicing at all! They would leave clean towels, toiler paper and coffee supplies outside the room, but you had to request what you needed on a daily basis. Also on top of this charge was parking at $25 a day.
We had an oceanfront room on the next to top floor, the noise from the road unfortunately covered up the sound of the sea, but at least we had a great view of the ocean. We changed into some cooler clothes and went out for something to eat and to get some supplies. We had planned to eat at MacDonalds (quick & easy) but they weren’t open for walk-ins and I didn’t want to do a mobile kerbside pick up order! We ended up at the ABC store and bought some sandwiches, snacks and drinks, which we took back to the room. We sat out on our balcony and enjoyed watching the preparations for the Sunday lu’au and we ate our ABC spoils.
The time difference & travelling caught up with us and we turned in early.
Day 4 - Around Kona
No surprises we were up early and out for a walk waiting for the restaurants to open. The Fish Hopper Seafood & Steaks restaurant had good reviews and opened at 7am, so queued outside with some of the locals. We had a nice hearty breakfast and then went back to the room to unpack and settle in a bit more. We walked around the hotel grounds and did some fish spotting off the pier.
Our hotel had an on property Hertz rental desk, so we only needed to walk on down to right side of the hotel reception area at midday. We needed to show our Safe Travels Hawaii green page and then they went to move the car to the hotel front. It was a Nissan Rogue that had seen a lot of beach activity! The seats were salt stained from where people had jumped into the car straight out of the sea. I had brought some wipes with us and there is no doubt the car went back to them a lot cleaner than when they gave it to us!
We went straight from the hotel to Walmart which was a 5 minute drive and we stocked up for the week with water, soda, beer and snacks. We were having a slow start to this vacation, so we did more relaxing on our balcony before an early night.
Day 5 - Drive to the North Coast
We ate a couple of bagels as we got ready and were out driving to Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park as the sun was rising. We never failed to see turtles here and this trip was no exception. I don’t remember there being chickens (Hei Hei) everywhere on our last visits, but I guess they must have been there! Our walk to beach was escorted by the dawn chorus and hei hei letting everyone know it was morning. As we walked out of the trees to the beach a large mongoose ran into cover. Hei hei on the other hand was happy to keep shouting about the dawn. A turtle was out on the beach and we were careful not to disturb it and walk around the back of it and watched it start making its way back to the sea.
We found many more turtles in the sea pools and enjoyed watching them graze on the rocks while we continued to listen to the wonderful dawn chorus mixed with the sound of the sea.
Next we did the bumpy slow drive to Puukohola Heiau & Spencer Beach Park - this road is not recommended for low clearance vehicles but with some very careful driving you can navigate around the majority of the steep drops! The beach was virtually empty and we enjoyed a walk doing some ocean wildlife spotting along the way. The wild goats I remembered seeing on our last visit were still hanging in the shade along the edge of the beach.
After a slow drive back along the same bumpy road to the main highway we drove along the 270 visiting the Lapakahi State Historical Park where we watched humpback whales breaching in the distance.
We then headed back to Kona via the 250 and 190, with a detour to Pololu Valley Overlook and went for a late lunch the Big Kahuna Beach Grill, this meal was very average and very over priced for the amount & quality. The cheekiest thing we found in Kona was the suggestion of tips starting at 20% going up to 25% - I do get the fact they have suffered from the covid restrictions, but Big Island was the only one to do this , the other islands had the usual suggestions of 15% to 20%.
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing before another early night.
Day 6 - Drive to the South West Coast
Today we returned to Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park - we visit this historical park every time we visit Big Island. It’s such a beautiful special site for Hawaiians. The bones of 23 chiefs are housed in the temple here. Beyond the Great Wall around the temple grounds, the Pu’uhonau served as a place of refuge for those that broke kapu (the laws & beliefs by which Hawaiian’s lived).
It’s also a great location to go rock pooling and rock snorkelling (looking for fish without entering the water). The pools are large and the fish can swim in and out of them meaning you get to see a great variety without getting wet.
We spent a few hours walking around the grounds watching the fish, birds and wild goats.
We carried on along the coast road where we discovered Whittington Beach State Park & Honuapo Bay - this spot which is really popular with locals at the weekend is a quiet picnic location during the week. At a first look the decrepit pier looks like an eyesore but once you understand the history it all becomes more fascinating. The first pier was constructed in the 1800s, when the first Europeans arrived the bay was a successful fishing village. A drought in the 1840s and a tsunami in 1868 decimated the village. In the 1880s, a commercial port was resurrected for fishing ships to dock and in the 1930s the port supported the Hutchinson Sugar Plantation. After Pearl Harbour was bombed in 1941, the US military, fearful the Japanese would land their troops here, wanted to minimise the landing opportunities by bombing Honuapo Pier.
We drove back towards Kona and briefly stopped in Naalehu where they had a local farmers / craft market. We bought a banana cake and some spicy spring rolls.
Next we drove to Manuka Natural Area Reserve to do the nature trail. This two-mile loop trail was described as gently gaining 400 feet in elevation with a recommendation to allow 2 to 3 hours. This was anything but a gentle walk. The broken up lava was quite difficult to walk on and the gain in elevation did not feel gentle when walking in the heat of the day! We could hear birds but they were difficult to spot and impossible to photograph. At one point we heard a deep grunt from the bushes but didn’t see what had made the sound. A little later in the walk we saw what we first thought was ground fowl, but quickly noticed they had four legs! They were piglets, around ten of them scattered into the bushes and we just caught a few wagging tails on camera. We’re sure the grunt we heard earlier in our walk was a wild pig.
Back to the car we were welcomed by wild mongoose, peacocks and peahens! All was fine until I picked up some trash from our rental car to put in the bin, they suddenly took interest in me and stormed the car! I had to close the car door until they lost interest and moved away!
We were back in Kona around 4pm and went for an earlier dinner at the Fish Hopper Seafood & Steaks restaurant. We really enjoyed our meals here, the portions weren’t large, but the quality of the food was good.
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