Flying Hilo

Friday, Dec 30
As planned, we started the day at Ken’s. Rob wasn’t feeling well, so he shared my shrimp omelet with a side of banana pancakes (with coconut and passion fruit syrups!). After breakfast, we went to the airport to check in for our helicopter flight over the volcano.
We arrived about 15 minutes early for check-in, which was required 45 minutes before the fight. Once everyone had checked in (36 people for 6 helicopters), we watched a 5 minute safety video and were assigned seats and pilots. Then we went and lined up on the tarmac for our flights to return from the previous tours. If everything went perfectly, we would have been sitting in the sun without hats (which were not allowed on the flight) for 30 minutes. When our pilot arrived, he shut down the propeller and called for a service vehicle. So we waited an extra 40 minutes for the issue to be resolved. At peak sun time. Eventually, we got on the helicopter, well sunburned, and took off. I was sitting behind the pilot while Rob was in the middle. They promised us that they would be giving everyone a copy of the DVD they make on each tour (which they usually sell for $25) to make up for the delay.
We flew past one of Barrack Obama’s planes, being held in Hilo as a backup while he was vacationing on Oahu. Then we flew over some Hilo neighbourhoods, a macadamia nut plantation and some lava fields. We got some good views of some gas plumes while we flew. We then got 2 passes over the opening of pu’u o’o, the source of the current flow to the ocean, one for each side of the ‘copter. We flew over on our side, so that we could look down right into the lava. Then, we started to follow the flow, which is mostly underground. Or possibly just cooled, it’s hard to tell how old black lava is from the air. But before we got very far, the generator light came on and the pilot turned around and took us back to the airport. He assured us repeatedly along the way that we weren’t in any danger, as we were flying on mechanical power and didn’t need electrical. And even when we needed electricity to land, we still had lots in the battery. So after waiting an hour and 10 minutes, we got about a 15 minute flight with a single glimpse (each side) of the red lava. The company will be refunding our payments and I talked them into free t-shirts. They gave us a generic DVD as they had turned off the recorders to save power when we lost the generator.
We then walked over and checked into our flight to Honolulu. The Hawaiian Air check in desk at Hilo is actually smaller than the helicopter tour check-in desk. There are supposed to be direct flights from the mainland, but everything on the arrivals and departures screens was “Honolulu”. And there were flights about every half hour. But because I pre-booked we had to wait about an hour and a half for the flight that I booked. I had tried to book the helicopter tour a little later but wasn’t able to. I’m kind of glad given the delay.
We got to Honolulu after an uneventful flight (despite being seated between 2 babies, it was a short flight!) The car rental company gave us a Dodge Calibre, and made a hard sell to upgrade us to a Mustang convertible. It was raining at the time, and I decided that renting a convertible would guarantee that it lasted for the rest of the trip. So we took the Calibre and saved $70.
I drove to the Waikiki Parc hotel, with valet parking. It’s one building away from the beach, with modern, upscale décor. The also offer daily rentals of a Lotus Elise, which Rob drooled on everytime we walked past. I didn’t splurge for an ocean view this time, so we saw lots of Honolulu buildings.
After checking in, we went for a walk down the beach. Waikiki is quite a bit busier than Kona, which was busy enough. The beach is rather small for the number of hotel rooms nearby. We counted the number of balconies at the Sheraton in front of the hotel and figure that hotel alone has about 1500 rooms. Our hotel has about 250 rooms. Behind the hotels, there’s a strip of high end stores, with thousands of people walking around. It very reminds me of Vegas, without the casinos and freebies. Hawaii is a poplar destination for Japanese, and they seem to be stocking up on American brands here.
From the beach we went in search of dinner and ended up at the International Marketplace, which is a bunch of vendors selling cheap, made in China, “Hawaiian” souvenirs. We ate at Haute Dog, a hot dog vendor that’s been featured on the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. We both had dogs with mango mustard and pineapple relish. I washed mine down with an awesome pineapple slush. After the hot dogs, we went to the icecream booth and got a brownie sundae to share. Yummy. Then back to the hotel (past all the Coach, Prada and Feragamo stores) for a quick swim in the hotel pool before bed. We caught the Hilton fireworks at 7:30 as an appetizer for tomorrow night.