The count-down timer counted 6 hrs and promptly chirped (We use timers instead of alarms; Our Nokia 6100 has a short-cut for count down timer and not for an alarm. The bright side is that now we know exactly how many hours of sleep we had). Yawningly, I looked at the cellphone. I was 5:15 am. I hate early flights. It makes us wake up at times that most techie people call the "mid-night".
A quick look outside the window made it even harder to actually get up. It was drizzling lightly. These cyclonic depressions are really depressing.
With the flight at 9:00am, we wanted to get in early at the SFO airport. We had called the shuttle for 6:15am. We figured, that it would take 1/2 hr to reach SFO, giving us well over 2 hrs to carry out the airport formalities. What could possibly go wrong? As per Murphy's law many. Upon boarding we realized that he is planning to make 4 more stops before heading to the airport, a slight oversight on our part. Still instead of 2.25 hrs, we get 1.5 hrs, which is plenty...right? Apparently not.
The first two stops went by easy (kinda like a warm-up). Our driver had trouble finding the third one even with a GPS-navigation device and the People to be picked up the last had trouble finding our cab, which surprisingly was parked right in front of their house. Anyways, by the time all the people who needed a ride on that cab were inside, my cell-phone was showing 7:45am. Still, we were quite a distance from the airport and the rain had steadily intensified.
FYI: We had to take 101 N to reach SFO and that is the direction of the traffic in the morning
Shree, on my side, increased the excitement of the whole event, by asking me the time nearly every minute :). It seemed like I was watching a basket ball match, and our team was trailing by very few baskets, with a few seconds to go. By the time I reported the time for the 25th time, we were at the airport.
After we checked-in our baggage at the curb, we knew we have won. There is no way the airlines can close their gates on us. To our luck, we found that the airport traffic was fairly light. So, security clearance was a breeze and we were at the gate by about 8:40am. Well in advance for the 9am flight.
After about 5.5 hrs of a rather uneventful flight, we reached Honululu, HI at about 12:30pm Local time. Honululu is in the island of Oahu. We had booked tickets from Honululu to Kona, Big Island, which was our final destination. Turns out that HNL has a number of terminals which are spread out and each inter-island airline would have flights from a different terminal.
We (read this as I, since Shree doesn't like to be a part of the goofups), unfortunately, had forgotten which airlines we were supposed to take. Although, there was enough time to travel to each terminal and ask the airlines there whether we are flying with them, Shree did not particularly fancy the idea of lugging around 50 lbs of baggage to every terminal. While all the details are stored online, I could not find the Internet (No wonder, I didn't have the AT&T Laptop connect card). So, I called up Lord Vishnu (read Hari) for help. With my Orbitz login and password, the lord was able to provide all the Flight Details and the Rental car details (which, we (again, read I) had forgotten as well).
Upon entering the right terminal, we were subjected to a very serious security check. My bag pack was sent through the xray machine thrice, only to recover a tooth-paste which had surprisingly escaped the India-US flight security check and the SFO-Honululu security check. It gave us the impression that we were about to enter a fortress.
Lo Behold, the fortress the security guarded:
The KONA Airport as seen, post security checks. It's an open air Airport.
The Tired Half-Shirt
The ladies behind me are perfoming the Hula-Kahiko dance. It is a traditional Hawaiian dance, common place in all their ceremonies. The statues are located at the Kona Airport.
After the routine baggage claim and car rental formalities, we headed to our hotel: "Kona by the sea". The hotel is built right in front of the Kona beach. As I mentioned before, Kona is in Big Island, which is relatively a new island when compared to other islands of Hawaii. Consequently, the beaches are lot rockier. Our Kona by the sea was no exception. It was built right on top of a rocky beach. Attached are some photographs that were shot from our room's balcony.
By the time we reached our hotel room, it was about 6pm. We got some food (courtesy MTR ready to eat packets) and rested.
Illige, Shree Ashvin awara Honey Moon Day 1 samapthavayithu.
