#The Nightmare Continues

We finally arrived in Honolulu a day late, tired and ready to hit the beach. We just had one more flight to catch, which was an American domestic flight. Domestic air travel in Australia has really spoilt us and the experience in America is just so woeful. Immigration and customs were easy and a breeze. We did get asked 20 questions but none were to catch us out.

Then we needed to cross the road to a different terminal and queue up to get out boarding pass. Given everyone uses the automatic check in kiosks they only had one counter open with a long queue. Needless to say everyone queueing up had a problem and hence every check-in took a while. I suddenly had an epiphany and noticed there was a premium queue and given we are One World Emerald fliers, decided to join in there. It got us our boarding passes quicker. But then we had to go to another part of the airport and join another queue to drop our bags in. Finally there was another queue for security which took almost 30 minutes.

We had another 2 hours before our flight departed so went into a cafe for lunch. The boys were ready to sample some authentic American fare. Matthew had Mac and cheese while Ben had a burger. The flight was, fortunately, uneventful. We landed in Kona which is one of the most unique airports I have ever been to. It is almost all outdoors and mostly didn’t even have a roof. After the luggage arrived we got our car rental and drove to our resort. Not having driven in the US in almost 10 years it took a little while to get used to driving on the right (or wrong) side of the road.

Once we arrived at the resort the drama continued. Given we were now a day late, and inspite our travel agent ringing them over the weekend, they had given our room away. Moreover it’s the week of the 4th of July and American schools are on holidays so all resorts are at capacity. This meant that the only thing they could offer us was 2 rooms in different parts of the hotel – which just would not work for us. After a few calls to our agent in Canberra, who in turn made numerous calls to hotel management, and me raging at the duty manager, topped off with a really tired Matthew bursting into tears; they offered us the presidential suite for the duration of the trip. And 4 ice cream vouchers for the kids.

So finally, after almost 60 hours from when we left home we were in a hotel room. Hopefully everything that can possibly go wrong has now gone wrong so the rest of the trip will be smooth sailing.

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