The travel day to Hawaii from Florida is a long one! We had a nice layover in Denver where we thankfully had no snow delays and were able to get some good food! Surprisingly, the long flight (7.5 hours) from Denver to Kona featured airplane seats without tv screens!! Apparently we should have checked our app and realized this in order to download movies for ourselves. Instead the seats featured a handy “clip” where we could secure our phones. Pretty crazy if you ask me, but we made it work!
Overall we had a pretty uneventful flight and landed directly in Kona in the late afternoon. The airport was so small that we exited the plane down the ramp and everything was open-air.
Even the baggage claim area was under the roof but open to the elements on all sides! It looked very much like the Polynesian Village at Disney World in that familiar way that Disney has ‘ruined’ everything for us travelers. After we grabbed our bags and navigated to the car rental building, we waited excitedly to see what car we’d get. I had signed us up for a “manager’s special” vehicle via Priceline and we had no clue what was to come. I was offered three sports cars or a minivan and we chose the white Ford Mustang.
We loaded up our bags and hit the road — heading to Walmart Kona to pick up all the food I ordered ahead of time. But, as soon as we accelerated on the highway the Mustang made a weird, loud sound. And the brakes were shaky. I knew we had a lot of driving ahead of us this week so we called Thrifty and they told us to come back and exchange it for another car. This time we had no choice. We were handed the keys to a bright red Dodge Challenger. My heart sank a bit because I remembered the blue Charger in Vegas… but there was nothing we could do. At least this car was significantly more quiet than the Mustang.
We grabbed our Walmart order and headed to the condo to check in. The parking garage was TIGHT but we were able to navigate our way in with “Clifford” — what we named the car.
The condo location was gorgeous! By then it was already dark, so after we ate some dinner in the condo we explored the grounds and worked our way to the pool area. The palm trees against the night sky were amazing and the waves were just crashing on the lava rock below. It was really calming and made us both excited for our first full day in Kona!
