Goats & One Last Hurrah

Hawaii April Travelog #34
Waikoloa - Sat, 16 Apr, 2022, 10pm

After hiking at Hapuna Beach we came back to the resort for our last night in Hawaii. On the drive back in to the resort, just before dark, we enjoyed a special treat. Lava goats!

Watch on YouTube

There's a flock of goats that lives near this resort. We saw them earlier in the week, too, just after sunset. It was getting pretty dark and I almost hit them as they were crossing the street. This evening there was better light when we crossed paths, and they were already across the road, clambering over the lava rocks. You can't see them all in this short video, but it's a sizeable wild flock. I saw at least 25 goats.

Once back at our suite we ate dinner in our own kitchen then changed for the hot tub. We figured we might as well enjoy one last hurrah here at the resort.

The hot tub was crowded this evening. All through the day we've seen people arriving at the property. The front desk had the welcome wagon rolled out. They even asked us if we were checking in when we went for our aborted timeshare sales presentation. Hmph, nobody was that welcoming when we actually checked in. The property looks to be way more crowded for this coming week than the week we've been here. It's good we were here during a quieter week. Until tonight we didn't have to deal with loud drunk people in the hot tub and unsupervised kids running up and down the halls.

Well, this is our last hurrah. Tomorrow morning we've got our alarms set for 6am. Our flight out leaves just after 9.

The Trip Home from Hawaii

Hawaii April Travelog #35
Back home - Sun, 17 Apr, 2022, 7pm

We're home from Hawaii now. We got in at a respectable hour today, landing at the airport before 5pm and walking through our own front door before 6. The cost of getting in this early was leaving early. We were up at 6am and left our rooms before 7. The flight was about 5 hours with a 3 hour time shift.

I mentioned several blogs back that the big island of Hawaii is basically country despite being a tropical vacation destination. Yeah, Honolulu is a big city with lots of high-rise towers, but on this island even the bigger towns are still small town America. One sign of that is the airport. It's fairly small... and it's outdoors.



Our gate was literally a gate. We were outdoors, the aircraft was oudoors, a literal gate kept us separated until it was time to board.

The flight was pretty much uneventful. We left more or less on time and arrived a bit early. The wifi worked. The flight was long enough, though, that wifi didn't stop me from getting bored halfway through.

After we landed at SJC and waited for our checked bag to emerge we hailed a ride home with Lyft. It seemed weird that it was still bright out as we were riding home around 5:30pm. Usually we get home later in the evening. We could have opted for a flight leaving 3 hours later today, and then not had to get up at 6am, but then we'd have gotten home at least 3 hours later. Being home-home by 6pm allows us to unpack, clean up, and rest up before going back to work first thing tomorrow morning.

Hawaii Trip Retrospective

Now that I've caught up on blogging about our trip to Hawaii this month— I posted the final entry earlier today— it's time for a retrospective about the trip. Yes, I'm had plenty of time to reflect on the trip already. Even though I just finished blogging about it, we finished the actual trip six days ago. (This kind of backlog is typical. 😅) Here are Five Things:

1) We packed accurately. I've written before about the pitfalls of overpacking. Travel magazines say that the average vacationer overpacks by 5 changes of clothes. Times even just 2 people that's like an extra suitcase, yikes! I wore every shirt and pair of shorts I packed, nothing wasted nothing wanting. We probably could have saved carrying several articles of clothing each if I'd remembered our timeshare in Waikoloa had a washing machine in the apartment. I don't think that would've made the difference of carrying one less suitcase, but we sure could have downsized one of our medium bags to a small bag.

2) We planned the right amount of time. This trip we spent 4 nights on Oahu, 5 on the big island of Hawaii. While hopping around does tend to be our style, the downside to it can be not spending enough time in any one place to see enough of the great things it has to offer. These were the right amounts of time... because we've visited both islands before. We had 5 nights on Oahu back in December, and we had a short visit to Hawaii a few years ago. If we hadn't been there before, a solid week on one island would've been the right amount of time.

3) Fine-tuning what to look for in a hotel. There are certain things we routinely look for in a hotel. We always scrutinize location, of course. We look for a decent hot tub because we enjoy soaking in hot tubs to relax. We check for whether a refrigerator and microwave are standard in the room. These all checked out fine when we chose the Holiday Inn Express in Waikiki.... But one thing we really missed was a balcony. For most trips a balcony is purely a nice-to-have. For resort-y vacation trips it's a lot more important.

4) Having a one-bedroom apartment rocked. In the past I've been take-it-or-leave-it about having the greater space that (usually) comes with a vacation rental vs. a typical hotel room. This trip, the one-bedroom apartment we had in a timeshare in Waikoloa was awesome. The full kitchen with full-size fridge made it easy to shop for and prepare meals in the room; the breakfast table was both a comfortable place to eat and a comfortable place to use our computers; and the sofa in the living room was great to stretch out on, with or without something playing on the big TV. The location a mile from the beach was still a major disappointment, but the suite was nice. And it had a balcony we used every day.

5) Taking the earlier flight home was right. I mentioned in the last few blogs that our flight home on Sunday required getting up at 6am to dress, eat breakfast, drive to the airport, etc. We seriously considered taking a flight 3 hours later; it would have let us take it easier our last day in Hawaii. But leaving 3 hours earlier left us 3 hours more to take it easy once we got home. We ate dinner in our own dining room, unpacked our suitcases, started a load of laundry, unwound from 9 days of travel, and got to bed at a reasonable hour. That helped us beat the 3 hour time zone change to get up early Monday morning ready for a full workweek. When we've rocketed home late at night on other trips we've been left feeling we're behind the next several days. I remember at least one time we got home late on a Sunday night and didn't unpack our suitcases until Thursday!

The success with coming home earlier this time validates the plan I have for a week-long trip in July to come home a full day early. We'll rocket home with a late night flight; but it will be Saturday night. We'll have all day Sunday to relax, unpack, clean up, and get back into the groove for work the following week.