6/09 Stuff that dawned on us in Hawaii
15. June 2009
2freewheelers
Smoke gets in your eyes
What, again? Yeah—turns out, in some places (like, oh, say, the Maui Seaside Hotel in Kahului) ashes stick to your rental car and smoke permeates the morning air. It’s from farmers burning their sugar cane fields the previous night. Good barbecue will often bring tears to one’s eyes; here you’ll be crying, but for the wrong reason.
Pick up and inspect your rental car in daylight
Otherwise, you’ll be replaying our scene in the Thrifty lot. “Is this a dent?” “Is this a scratch?” The sense of touch gets dull after 11+ hours in the air. Just like the sense of everything else.
Don’t assume that restaurants are open during normal hours
Lunch is 11 to like 3:30 everywhere, right? Nope. Island time translates either to shorter hours, or “We close approximately whenever we feel like it.” Call before going.
Bring a decent stash of food for the plane
If you, like us, wouldn’t eat airplane food unless at gunpoint, let alone be willing to pay $7 mid-flight for it, you’ll need to do better than we did on our way up. Keep sugary stuff to a minimum or for the next several hours your mouth will feel like the inside of a Pez dispenser. Think protein, and pack stuff that can last without refrigeration. Peanut butter is our new religion.
Bring a pair of Tevas
Flip flops aren’t especially ideal to wear if you’re a sad fanatic photographer who insists on taking pictures while crisscrossing lava rocks at a 45 degree angle. Um, no…I read it somewhere.
Speaking of footwear
The floors at airports, especially through security, can best be described as gnarly. This reporter, being a beach baby, hates shoes and if she had her way, would never wear them. Like ever. Going barefoot a lot, she has consequently picked up every foot ailment not nailed down. Our trick:
- Wear socks and sneakers to the airport.
- Just before you get on line for security, put an old set of socks over the first pair.
- Walk with your double set of socks on the disgusting gnarly floor, go through, and get your stuff off the conveyor belt.
- Find a garbage can, and before putting your shoes back on, chuck the old set of socks
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6/09 Bite Bytes
15. June 2009
2freewheelers
Does Hawaii even know how to cook bad food? Everything was amazing.
Kauai
- Caffé Coco
– Ahi sandwich—best we ate on both islands! (Shore locals—this place is like a tropical Inkwell)
– Hibiscus tea
- Postcards
– Wahoo with peppered pineapple sage sauce
– Housemade chocolate volcano. It’s 12 bucks, it’s small, but it’s beyond.
- Hanalima Bakery
– Cinnamon buns with cream cheese icing. Enough calories to stupefy a moose; still worth it. Once!
- Java Kai
– World’s most perfect chocolate chip cookies, served up at 8:30a by a smiling stoner. Welcome to Hawaii!
- Lappert’s ice cream
– Mango ice cream/mango sorbet swirl really rocked; so did coconut/passionfruit sorbet. Also recommended: Heavenly Hana and Big Island Inspiration.
Maui
- Cheeseburger in Paradise
– The food’s great—the atmosphere is even greater. Deck over the water at sunset, some dude strumming a guitar, and everyone in the house singing, “Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul…” The place is a Maui brochure.
- Roselani’s Ice Cream (sold at various ice cream places)
– If you eat *nothing* else while visiting Hawaii, have Roselani’s coconut custard ice cream. Coconut diehards will want to take nude laps in it. Still getting bits out of my hair.
- Serpico’s
– Allenhurst’s best (okay, only and best) pizza guy sold his store to a new owner three years ago, moved to Maui with his wife and six kids, and opened a place in Pukilani, on the road to Haleakala. The pizza tastes exactly like the one we still get ¼ mile away, which is to say fresh, made from scratch, and awesome. And the owner, Hatch, runs just as friendly and community-oriented a place as he did here.
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6/09 Chicken Advisory System
15. June 2009
2freewheelers
We’re happy to report low incidence of noisy poultry at both of the hotels we stayed at on Kauai and Maui—a first for us! As always, click the chickens to find out what they mean.
Kauai Sands Hotel |
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Maui’s Aina Nalu |
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6/09 Hawaii Photos
15. June 2009
2freewheelers
We uploaded our favorite pictures from our Hawaii trip to Flickr.
- For descriptive captions along with the photos, click here to see the set.
- Or you can just click & watch the slideshow below.
Or…If you want to see it full screen (way cool!) just click the 4-way arrows in the lower right hand corner of the slideshow once it starts.
Hawaii | 2 Comments »
Photo Contest
15. August 2008
2freewheelers
Part of freewheeling involves trying new things and extending your comfort zone. We love photography, but it’s mostly been for our own enjoyment. We decided to change that.
NJ travel and tourism is producing an art book on the best of new jersey and is soliciting photos to feature in it. We submitted a handful of ours, 9 or 10. if you are curious, a photography lover, or are just crushingly bored today at work and would kill for an escape, go to www.nj.com/greatdestinationsnj and snoop. if any of our photos impress you, register for the site & go ahead and vote for them. if not, just look around at the others and have fun; at least you didn’t waste the time doing work.
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6/08 Chicken Advisory System
6. July 2008
2freewheelers
What’s The Chicken Advisory System? You know you want to know. Click any of the chickens to find out.
Moorea’s Club Bali Hai |
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Raiatea’s Sunset Beach Hotel |
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Bora Bora’s Novotel Beach Resort |
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6/08 French Polynesia Photos
6. July 2008
2freewheelers
We uploaded our favorite pictures from our Polynesia trip to Flickr. You can read more commentary about the trip with our photos. Click here to see the set or here to see a slideshow.
Bora Bora, French Polynesia, Moorea, Pictures, Raiatea, Tahaa, Travel | 0 Comments »
6/08 Bite Bytes – French Polynesia
5. July 2008
2freewheelers
Our choices for the best food.
Bora Bora
- Maitai Polynesian hotel restaurant
- La Bounty
- Bloody Mary’s
Hawaiian pizza (local pineapple and chunks of ham)
banana tatin
housemade chocolate gateau (dark chocolate perfection)
local coconut ice cream (Or go just to see the bathrooms, outfitted with rock sinks and little waterfalls when you pull a lever, or the men’s urinal, which features a phallic flush pull-chain)
Raiatea
- Seahorse
- Le Napoli
fried rice with salted fish, profiteroles
Quatre Saisons pizza. Friendly, local family hangout. (Asthmatics, order to go; the restaurant is fairly well-enclosed and uses a wood-fired oven.)
Moorea
- Allo Pizza
- Lycée Agricole
- Les Antipodes (Restaurant Creperie)
- Carameline’s
Le Marseillaise pizza (with fresh tuna and anchovy)
homemade chocolate mousse
pineapple/soursop juice, banana ice cream, citron sorbet
‘La Chicken’ crepe
pineapple/caramel crepe
incredibly buttery individual banana or pineapple pastries
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6/08 Stuff that dawned on us in French Polynesia
5. July 2008
2freewheelers
Neck pillows rock.
It was a red-eye flight across the Pacific, 8 hours and 20 minutes, and the seats in coach these days tilt back a couple of inches—no more. Using the pillow gives your head an almost-decent place to rest, letting you get some sleep.
So does sticking to carry-on luggage.
Especially on a trip like this. We opted to break up the flying to avoid sitting on one airplane for 14 hours, but that also meant travelling for a longer overall time. The trip from the train, to a shuttle, to an airport, to a plane, to another airport, to another plane, to a ferry, to a shuttle bus would have flattened us were it not for the ease of taking nothing but two small LL Bean rolling suitcases, a bag of food and a camera. So you wash out your t shirts each night—no biggie. You’ll grin like a village idiot when you walk past the bleary-eyed throngs of people at the luggage carousel.
The easygoing lifestyle on the islands permeates everything.
In two of our hotel rooms, we had no phone, no clock, and no 24/7 front desk. Remember the expression hakuna matata (’no worries’) from The Lion King? You’re about to live it. This is good–you are there to relax, after all. Ask questions politely, get your answers, then try to chill.
Smoke gets in your eyes.
And (with apologies to The Platters) in your lungs. Polynesians like to burn things. Coconuts, tires, their dinner in a dug-out pit in their yards, lots of things. We had a couple of nights on Moorea that were relentlessly smoky. If you’re sensitive, have asthma or another respiratory problem, you have a few options: splurge for an overwater bungalow, where the breeze will keep the smoke away; splurge for a fancy hotel, which tends to be a ‘bubble’, away from the surrounding community; or if you’re laypeople like us, just check that your hotel room is well-sealed. Thatched bungalows aren’t. When driving, watch for billowing smoke up ahead and roll up your windows.
Stray animals are everywhere.
All of the animals we came across were friendly and tame. But when driving, keep a lookout for dogs, who are as ‘hakuna matata’ as the locals, and either wander with abandon into your path or don’t move from where they and their pals are sprawled in the street. Cats commonly walk through the open airports, into restaurants, and into your room if you leave the door open. You’ll often see geckos (okay, not exactly stray animals) in your room. Some are tiny and extremely cute. They are shy but very quick. Keep suitcases closed to ward off stowaways.
Beware of online travel info that implies you can do anything in Polynesia without an expensive guided tour.
We have always rented a car in our travels and mistakenly thought it would serve us 100% of the time on the Polynesian islands. On Moorea, it did, for the most part. The marae (stone temple) hike and the view on Belvedere were memorable and accessible by car. But the hidden waterfalls we had read about are not only dry in May, but the road up was apparently atrocious. Same goes for the vanilla and pineapple plantations. Raiatea boasts the tiare apetahi, a flower that grows nowhere else on earth, and the online tourism sites welcome people to go see it. But when we got to the island, we learned it requires an 8-hour, crack-of-dawn, guided hike up a steep, rocky mountain. And that’s when it’s actually in bloom. Bora Bora has WWII cannons, but they are only accessible by paying for a tour to get you there.
We splurged on a Moorea shark/ray tour and a Taha’a vanilla tour. If you can afford a lot of tours, or if you’re perfectly happy beach-bumming each day, you’ll be fine. We needed more to do, and felt hamstrung a few times b/c the interior of the islands are nearly impenetrable without a tour.
Along the same lines, water activities are king.
The islands have a little shopping, some nice beaches and a lot of great food, but their real ace-in-the-hole is the water—sailing, snorkeling, motu excursions, and diving. The islands are magnificent to look at as you approach them, but with a few exceptions, the surf offers far more possibilities for fun than the turf.
The cheaper rental cars are stick shift.
Just a heads-up.
Not-bad mosquitoes and no-see-ums.
We didn’t encounter many of ‘ums. The Internet gives varying reports of critters on Polynesia that would put Dracula out of business, but we never had a problem. The trip was in late May and early June ‘08, the beginning of the dry season, so that might have been a factor, plus home for us is the beach/lake, so we’re used to swatting the odd bug. The only time we found them troublesome was after hiking the interior of Moorea, which was as jungle-like as the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Some travelers might be more sensitive. If you’re one of them, pack bug spray.
Travel guides aren’t always on target.
The Frommer’s 2008 guide recommended the “ice cold coconut milk” at a store in downtown Raiatea and listed the hours of operation. It took us two tries to get into the place b/c the Frommer’s hours were inaccurate, and then were even more disappointed when we saw coconut milk wasn’t even on the menu. It’s minor, but this type of things happened a lot while travelling through the islands.
The weather is more fickle than Liz Taylor.
I know, Polynesia is paradise. But sometimes it rains in paradise. Pack lightweight, roll-up-able raincoats. It can also be very windy. Bora Bora was sunny, but the wind never let up, so the beach was chilly at times.
There are no sidewalks.
None of the islands we visited –Moorea, Raiatea, Taha’a and Bora Bora—have sidewalks, and some streets are very narrow. Watch out for locals speeding by on scooters. They even do wheelies and stand up on those things. No joke. Admittedly fun to watch…but from a distance :)
Learn a little français before you go.
The locals speak both French and Polynesian, and most speak at least some English. Having said that, it does help to have some French in your back pocket, especially the days of the week (for understanding weather reports and days of operation) and other basics. Remember, the more outlying the islands, the less likely locals will know much English. In Polynesian, “Hello” is Iaorana (yo-RAH-na) and “thank you” is Mauruuru (ma-ROO-roo).
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1/08 BVI Photos
21. March 2008
2freewheelers
We uploaded our favorite pictures from our British Virgin Islands trip to Flickr. You can read more commentary about the trip with our photos. Click here to see the set or here to see a slideshow.
British Virgin Islands, Pictures, Travel | 0 Comments »