nerd’s eye view

Lost Perspective in Waikiki

Around 8pm on our last night in Waikiki, we tried to return our rental car, but the place we needed to go was on fire. The streets were packed with diverted traffic, impatient police officers, fire trucks, and slews of slack-jawed tourists. There were lights and water and sirens everywhere as fire trucks attempted to manage the three alarm blaze. We circled a five block radius again and again, trying to find some back way in to the rental car place as though a hazard to health and safety could not prevent us from getting our car returned on time. Rental car companies, as you probably know, are notorious for sticking you with (among other things) fees for late returns or dropping the car at the wrong place.

Phone calls to the rental car HQ didn’t help. “We’re aware of the issue,” said the trying to be helpful person on the line. She instructed me to take the car to another rental car company nearby who’d agreed to help out. Except. “Oh, yeah, you’re in the right location,” said the valet in front of the hotel, “but that desk closed at three today. No one’s been here for hours and hours.”

Back at our hotel at the Kapiolani Park end of Waikiki, there was no traffic, no noise, no smoke. The rental car agent on the phone (this was call number four) finally conceded that yeah, it made sense for me to return the car to the airport the following day and he’d recommend - but could not guarantee - that the fees be waived. I took a deep breath. I turned on the TV to see if I could learn more about what happened, but the only local news I could find was a replay of the earlier 6pm news. In Korean.

The next morning, we drove to the airport where we could not find the rental car return place. We circled the airport three times and asked the guys at the suggested other company if they’d take our car because, hey, that’s what the trying to be helpful agent told us to do last night. “No, no, no, your place is over there, outside the airport. You gotta head out thataway, you’ll see it underneath the Nimitz, just past the gas station.” We’d given ourselves plenty of time, but truth be told, I was getting kind of tense. Rather, I had a tension hangover from last night.

The gal at the desk gave me the fisheye. “What fire?” she said. “I didn’t see a thing about it.” I picked up the newspaper that was on the desk in front of her and lo and behold, there was Not One Word about the fire on the front page. Not one. She gave me that teeth-gritting smile and asked me to wait while she whispered questions to her associate. Our paperwork was shuffled over to the office. We waited some more. A shuttle came, loaded up some passengers and left again. “She hates us,” I thought. It was early. I had not had coffee yet.

I’m sure it was not ten minutes before she came back out, but it seemed like much longer. I kept flipping through the newspaper, wondering why there was nothing on the fire that stalled the center of Waikiki’s tourist district last night. Nothing. I found this increasingly aggravating. “You’re all set,” she said, and handed me the receipt. “This is the same as if you’d returned the car downtown last night. Thanks - the shuttle should be along in about five minutes.”

–

Here’s a report about the not imaginary fire on Oahu’s channel 9. And FYI, if you click through to the notorious rental car fee article, you’ll find one about “the needle not quite on F.” We got tagged for that by Dollar on Moloka’i , though the desk clerk immediately reversed the fee when we handed her the receipt for topping up the tank not 10 minutes before our arrival at the airport. Hold on to those gas receipts, comrades!

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Nerd’s Eye View’s Hawaii Favorites

• Best products: Luana Spa in Hana. That lemon grass body scrub? Oh my.
• Best meal: Chef Mavro in Honolulu. Fireworks for the mouth. Wow.
• Best smoothie: A tie! The hippies on the road to Hana or the Vietnamese guy in the Honolulu Chinatown market.
• Best bathrooms: Molokai Ranch. Deep claw foot tubs and big showers, nice fixtures. Not fancy or overdone, just well thought out.
• Best local advice: The channel crossing can be really rough between Maui and Molokai or Lanai. If you get seasick, fly.
• Best lunch: Grinds, out there on the highway towards Eleele. Homemade bread for the sandwiches, tasty baked goods, real food. Honorable mention to Kalaheo Cafe, also on Kauai. Oh, yeah, and Lava Java in Kona.
• Best place to not buy a ukulele: (No really, you should buy one.) A tie! The Ukulele Gallery in Holualoa or Scotty’s Music on Kauai.
• Best uke I did not buy: Kanile’a. Wow, these are gorgeous, have great action, and sound incredible. (Hint, hint, my birthday is coming.)
• Best night out: The Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key. The locations and artists change, but if you’re in the islands, catch a show. We saw the always wonderful Led Ka’apana - it’s awesome to hear the sound of slack key in an open-sided tent with the sound of the rain and the ocean for backup.
• Best shuttle driver: David, who drives the Lanai shuttle. Full of useful information, funny as hell.
• Best shopping for souvenirs: Kitchy, ovedone, made outside Hawaii, fabulous. Hilo Hattie’s. I am deeply flawed, I love Hilo Hattie’s.

Photo: Rainstorm arriving in Halawa, Molokai

• Best island vibe: Molokai. Hang loose, cousin.
• Best all in one experience: Kona Village Resort. Gorgeous location, comfortable and charming individual grass shack inspired “cabins”, good food, helpful staff, did I mention the location? Yeah, it’s expensive, but if you can afford it you will not be disappointed.
• Best ice cream: Dave’s - we got ours at the Kamo’i Snack-n-Go on Molokai, but you can get it in a couple of different places.
• Best lookout: Kalalau Viewpoint - all the way at the end of the road past Waimea Canyon, Kauai.

Hawaii

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For Travel Writers: Seven Successes from the Road

Given the overwhelming nature of the task - find out everything about traveling in Hawaii in three and a half weeks - some things were bound to go wrong. But things went right, too, from time to time. At reader L’s request, here’s the list of things that went as they should have.

1. Took lots of pictures.

Oh, they’re so pretty! You can see them here. We added a few photo toys to our kit before we traveled, including a little pocket camera (Panisonic Lumix) that has quite a wide angle view. The pics are great. With zero modesty, I expected that, but I had lowered expectation for the point and shoot stuff. They’re really good - a lot of the wide beach shots and viewpoint shots are with the Lumix. And, for the record, they’re J’s pics, not mine. Related to that, J charged all the batteries every night, we never had a camera with a dead battery. Oh, and we never ran out of flash cards, either, we had loads of memory with us.

2. Didn’t freak out.

When the laptop died, when the cell phone had no signal, when the kayak company had no idea who we were, when there was no rental car, we did not freak out one bit. Nope. We just rolled with it and did [fill in the blank] instead. And usually, it was fine. Sometimes, better than fine, like when the guy at the rental car desk got us after the high maintenance blonds who wanted the convertible didn’t want the convertible could we have rather I guess yes we’ll go to the airport actually no we’ll take the car you have but does it come in a convertible? There were no cars, but he got us a car. Thanks, Waikiki rental car guy who said Aloha with a South Carolina twang.

Photo: The laptop’s last days at The Volcano Store

3. Let the people talk.

Ooo, I’m talky. Really talky. I can’t shut up sometimes. But I have learned over time that when someone is starting to tell a story, that’s when it’s time to shut the hell up. That’s how we got to hear the weed vs. taro story, the 12 seater outhouse story, the my granddad jumped ship and went to grow coffee instead story, the Washington natives could see I was Kalama, I looked just like them story.

4. Brought the sidekick.

Yes, people, I know there’s all kinds of talk about having your partner along masquerading as the photographer. And I felt funny about this because a “true professional isn’t supposed to” bring the sweetheart in some bid to make the work into a vacation. But without J reading maps, schlepping luggage, loading batteries, taking pics, gathering receipts, keeping things moving along and performing number of other useful tasks, I’d have got a lot less done. High powered celebs get to travel with an assistant; this is why. Having an assistant is damned useful. And if that assistant happens to be your companion in more ways than one, well, okay. There will be no further excuses or rationalizations from me on this issue.

Photo: J shooting Little Grass Shack pics

5. Stayed on task.

On more than one occasion, I’d have been delighted to crawl in to bed for an afternoon nap. That happened - um - never? I did take the random 20 minute recharge under a palm tree but the usual turn of events was to get coffee or a smoothie or something and then, keep going. Things became a blur, but the photos and notes will provide clarity. Not once did we slip into the idea that we were on vacation - we were always on the job, always moving, always finding and photographing and going on to the next thing.

6. Took manageable bites.

We didn’t try to do it all. Yes, there are dozens of things I wanted to do, partly for myself, partly for the guide. But it was impossible. It takes a lot less time out of the day to chat with the gal at the desk about the boating trip than it does to take the boating trip itself. I could have gone flying, kayaking, horseback riding, ATV touring, hiking, surfing, and any other number of activities, but those things take time that needed to be spent otherwise. We weren’t diverted into trying to do everything and we didn’t stress out that we couldn’t.

7. Kept it real, dude, and had fun.

In spite of the fact that we were working all the damn time, there was the critical fact that We Were In Hawaii. It was sunny and touristy and fun. We didn’t lose sight of that and okay, if maybe we didn’t really want to drop in at the Dole Plantation, we went ahead and did so and pretty much hurled ourselves at whatever there was to offer, be it a giant pineapple and vanilla ice cream float (sounds disgusting, tasted delicious) or a fake concrete wave for photos of yours truly pretending to surf. Come on, a pineapple in Hawaiian shorts playing the uke? Like you could have resisted.

Photo: Dorking it up at the Dole Plantation

Now, dammit, I have to start writing that book.

Related: For Travel Writers: Seven Lessons from the Road

travel writing, Hawaii

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For Travel Writers: Seven Lessons from the Road

I’d do it differently if I had the chance to do it again.

I’m sure you’ve said that before, and certainly, it’s not the last time I’ll say it. But frequency makes it no less true. I made more than a handful of rookie mistakes, though the trip, planned with a mere four weeks notice, was still quite the rabbit out of the hat. Oh, enough obfuscating metaphors (here at NEV, we do love big words!), let’s cut to the chase. Here’s what I f-ed up and how I’d do it differently.

1. More planning time.

I was a pinch hitter for the Hawaii guide. There’s always a pinch hitter, and hey, you have to say yes to things if you want to get anywhere, so that’s okay, but check it out: Hawaii tourism asks for six months lead time when you go to them to plan a press trip. Six months! I wish! Had I known that, I’d have asked for at least another month’s extension to my deadline. It was possible to pull the trip together, but the pressure of time meant that I was saying yes to things just to fill my calendar, not because they were necessarily the best choice.

2. Treat transit time as dead time.

I scribbled up a tentative itinerary based on what I thought we could squeeze into a reasonable amount of time, but I didn’t really have a grasp of the big picture. I feel like I short changed myself on Maui because I didn’t realize that the travel between islands would take so much time. I figured I’d have half days here and there to do stuff, but if, like me, you spent all afternoon a sickly shade of green from the channel crossing, there’s no way you’re keen on nightlife that evening. Nope. But it’s not just that. You have to pack up, make sure you have everything, check out, get your rental returned, get to the next place, get oriented, find your hotel… this is true for all travelers, not just the writer in research mode, but for the writer in research mode it means work hours lost. That was a real drag.

3. Print it.

On day three, when our laptop died, I thought I could get through on my limited calendar, but it just wasn’t enough. I missed a scheduled date - I feel really bad about that - because I’d abbreviated the company name on my notes. J, bless him, on the day the machine died, said we should go to the mall and Just Buy a New One, but I didn’t want to do that because we’d be settling for what was available, not what we’d buy by choice, but it might have been the better decision because we still ended up wasting time and money on ridiculously overpriced internet while I searched my archived Gmail to find important information. If I’d printed everything up, I’d have been in much better shape. It also would have saved us the stone faced annoyance of airline employees who when asking me which flight we were on, were not amused when I said I did not know.

4. Tell them to mail the press kit.

When we checked in for our final inter-island flight, we were nearly 10 pounds over in excess baggage. That was all propaganda from providers and tourist information, can you believe it? We schlepped that stuff everywhere and it was heavy. Really heavy. Better they post it to your home office and you review it later. Honestly, a lot of it gets thrown out later, anyway.

5. Ask more people for their pictures.

I have the great fortune to be the sort of person that people seem to want to tell stories too. On our last day in Kona, we walked into a shop where the proprietor, an extremely healthy barefoot guy in his late 70s, saw my Lana’i backpack and started reminiscing about his childhood on that island where he picked pineapple, where his mother is buried, where everyone had a “bongo number” that they used to pay for their goods in the company store… And a few days before, at Scotty’s Music on Kauai, the Hawaiian owner started telling stories of how he’d traveled the world to surf, from Alaska to Tahiti, and I don’t have pictures of either of those guys. I’m really sorry about that. I don’t know that they’d be appropriate for the guide, but I do wish I had them for myself.

6. Visit the tourist office and meet your contacts.

When I did hook up with the folks I was supposed to meet, it was hugely valuable, even if they were the PR reps for something they were trying to push. Why? Because they’re locals. They can tell you where the nightlife is or where the good food is or which beach is really the best… they really do try to answer your questions about, well, anything going on in their backyard. I’m not exactly wracked with regret over the dates I missed, but I am sorry and I know that I would be all the more informed for having met more people. Related to that, if there’s time, have questions ready as openers, just to get going, even if you think you might know the answers. Local insight trumps everything, every time.

7. Plan some vacation time.

I know this sounds really dumb from someone who’s just back from Hawaii, but I’m whupped. If you’ve done this kind of work before, you know what I mean and if you haven’t, you’re totally unsympathetic. That’s fine, I get it, but I can also tell you that in three and a half weeks, we had one day that was a vacation day. One day off in three and a half weeks. We were up and at it every morning by nine at the absolute latest, did a full ten-twelve hour day of rushing about, and sometimes, headed out again in the evenings. It was exhausting, absolutely exhausting. A person needs a day off every now and then, and not getting a day off when you are in a tropical paradise is freaky frustrating.

And in case you think I have NO perspective, here I am, um, a-hem, hard at work.

Related: For Travel Writers: Seven Successes from the Road

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Aloha, Oy: Beautiful Kauai

Yes, it’s green and yes, there are chickens everywhere and yes, Hanalei is heaven by the sea, though the surf was crazy high when we were there and we could not get near the ocean, which was too bad. There were a lot of disappointed looking humans on the beach but it’s better to be disappointed than to be swept to sea in a rip tide.

The rental car company hates us (or they would if they knew) because we drove the 1/2 hour “road” to Polihale State Park - a huge stretch of beach with towering cliffs on one end. I had a helluva headache by the time we got back on the main highway, one that stuck with me for much too long, but the beach was indeed spectacular. There were a handful of those pickups raised up on ridiculous struts crawling down the beach like post apocalyptic dinosaurs, but the beach is so big and they were so far away that they hardly wrecked the feeling.

We have three more nights in Hawaii and then we will return to the shock of sweaters and closed toe shoes in Seattle. We have been in, what, 15 hotels, five rental cars, three fancy restaurants, and a nene underneath a mango tree… I remember things like which hotel had the best product or the most expensive internet (this one!), but I don’t remember so much which beach that was or where I parked the car or even what color the rental car is and yesterday I tried to get into the wrong Dodge Caliber - an awful car, really - because there was a fleet of them lining the parking lot.

Here’s a disappointing thing: In spite of the fact that so much good coffee is grown here, we are having a hard time finding decent coffee in the restaurants. Perhaps it’s hit and miss, but we have, for the last week, not had a good cup of coffee. I don’t quite get it. Often the coffee packets will say things like “10% Kona!”, never mind that 100% Kauai is grown just up the road here. We keep trying. Consoloation, though, yesterday we had the best damn pineapple I’ve ever had. We ate it in the car while driving down from the Waimea Canyon.

The lack of connectivity is truly a challenge, two days ago we waited on the beach (boo hoo) for a call from the B&B where I thought we were staying, oh, oops, that’s tonight, and we missed the kayak trip because I could not connect with the provider to confirm. It’s not a great tragedy, more a small disappointment, made slightly more difficult by the fact that my cell phone is also operating on full Hawaii mode, meaning, I get a signal when it feels like it, or not.

Upon return to the mainland, I am determined to implement something in my own life based on a sign we saw in a Kaunakakai shop window: Open 9:45ish - 4:00. Molokai time, that’s the way to live.

Pictures upon our return, I promise.

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Aloha Ah: Molokai Mellow

I am enchanted. I did not mean to be but there is nothing for it. Molokai, with the funky central town, with the nearly empty beaches, with the friendly locals, Molokai is the Hawaii I dream about. I could disappear here - in fact, if you ever find I have gone AWOL, let me tell you now, this is where I will be, living under a tin roof, eating excellent bananas, and watching the sun go down with those fishing guys, Pearson and Chad, on the west end beach.

“Sometimes,  you gotta take some time out and go fishing,” they said. They showed us how the sinkers work, offered to share their beer, asked about the pictures we’re taking, the work we’re doing, and enjoyed the sunset. They told us about driving trucks in Vegas - Vegas, can you imagine? “My skin was so dry when I came back here I looked just like the desert. A year and a half in to it, I thought, what am I doing out here?” They had a little portable boom box with them and when the radio play Big Iz’s Over the Rainbow, I thought I must have died and gone to heaven.

We started and ended our day at the beach. This morning we talked to the island story teller, this afternoon, to the tourism specialist, and this evening, to the fishermen. In between, we walked in the woods, ate pizza, booked a flight back to Maui (no boat! yay!), and drank Molokai grown coffee. In the lobby of the lodge we gave away our ferry tickets to a woman from Alaska. She tried to give us money, but we refused. “Send us something from Alaska instead,” I said, and J. handed her a business card.  Maybe someday I’ll get a secret prezzie from Alaska that came via Hawaii.

“Not everyone likes Molokai,” said the tourism specialist, “and that’s okay.” Not everyone likes it, but I positively love it here.

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