Monday, January 10 – transit from Madison to Honolulu

After a one year hiatus (thanks Covid!), the Winter Escape is back!!! Omicron be damned!

So, once I made the decision to risk my life to flee another Wisconsin winter, I faced a more important choice: Where should this battle against Covid take place? Warm weather overseas escape options were severely limited due to lockdown scenarios. Once my focus pivoted to the States, Hawaii pretty much became my main focus. I’d never been there (I prefer visiting new places); it has the allure of a foreign country; and they’re open for business! The pieces ultimately came together in October when I received an email from Scott’s Cheap Flights (thanks Kait!). Hawaii was on sale!

I ended up booking a round trip flight from Milwaukee to Honolulu for $440 on Southwest Airlines (as in previous posts, I plan on being transparent regarding the costs I incur; hopefully it will assist you in future travel planning). The duration is set for about three months. I consider spending the entire time in Hawaii the “worst case” scenario. Terrible, I know! Basically, what I mean by that is my hope is to travel to other places in the region as pandemic restrictions ease. Thailand is open, so that is a possibility. However, thanks to a tip from Holly, I’ve discovered that Fiji and Tahiti have also recently reopened. Those two are both high on my wish list. I’m following the same approach on this trip as I did when I went to South America for three months in 2019 – no set itinerary, just a list of places to see and things to do. I’ll figure it out as I go.

My journey started at 6:45am on Monday in Madison with a ride to the airport from Chuck. I don’t mean Dane County Regional. This is Milwaukee folks. Huge thanks Chuck! And did I mention that is was 2 degrees in Madison as the road trip commenced? Yeah, risking my life to escape that wasn’t a concern!

The trip included a layover in Las Vegas of about 5 hours. I should note here that I paid an additional $25 total to get early boarding on both the flight to Vegas (4 hours) and Honolulu (6 hours). Considering Southwest charges no bag fees, I didn’t feel too bad about the outlay. And it turned out to be a great investment, as I was able to snag an exit row window seat on both flights! (Southwest has open seating – choose any unoccupied seat when you board the plane) As the flight’s departure time in Vegas approached, the gate agents were huddled in discussion. This can’t be good. It turns out one of the flight attendants failed to show up for the flight. Oh oh. Can you say “canceled flight”? Fortunately, they were able to sort it out (not sure how though, as I never saw another FA appear – don’t care). This resulted in our arriving in Honolulu at 11:00pm, around 30 minutes late. Apparently ours was the last arrival of the night. The airport was deserted!

Hawaii has made it easy for vaccinated domestic travelers to visit. No tests. No quarantine. And to expedite the arrival process, they’ve set up a website where visitors can upload their vaccination details. Once this is complete, a QR code is generated, which can be scanned by Hawaii airport personnel. However, Southwest has accelerated the process further by performing the scan at the departure airport and then issuing a wristband to the traveler. Slick!

I ended up getting an Uber from the airport to my hotel in Waikiki for about $23, which I thought was pretty reasonable. (It was only about a 20 minute drive at that time of night) Arrived at the hotel around midnight (4am in Madison). I booked the Coconut Waikiki Hotel for 4 nights at an all-in cost (incl taxes and fees) of $164/night (welcome to Hawaii!).

Tuesday, January 11 – Waikiki

Finally fell asleep around 1am. Woke up a 5. A.M. UGH! Hello jetlag.

It’s going to be a beautiful day! Clear skies, temps in the 70s. Which way is the beach?

I did some walking around the beaches and parks of Waikiki today. But I have to admit, after yesterday’s long day of travel followed by the lack of sleep (and probably old age!), many rest stops were required!

By 2pm I was pretty much whipped. So I headed back to the hotel and chilled. I was able to get in about 14k steps though, so not a terrible day. I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to do more exploring, but I need to remind myself that this is a three month marathon, not a sprint!