You know you’re not in Kansas anymore when you are loitering around the outdoor airport watching a rooster peck his way down the main road.
The travel adventure started at the YVR check-in counter where we learned our flight was delayed two and a half hours. Luckily Jeff “I refuse to get Nexus” Barrett has himself some 50K travel status with Air Canada which means lounge passes. Maybe Edmonton relocation is paying off after all. We dumped our priority-tagged bags and headed to security where my boarding pass scan was declined due to a printer error. What “printer error” means is that you have to go back to the check-in counter to get a new one. Now, if you don’t have status, this would have sucked to death because even the kiosks had lineups of people waiting to check-in and we would have had to line up in that mess all over again. Although with now having four and a half hours to kill, who would really care. With my new boarding pass, we got a security line-up mulligan and were inserted into the middle instead of having to start all over. This left us TONS of time to enjoy the airport lounge and its broad array of food delicacies: from cold cereal to packaged yogurt and fresh fruit. Well, not so much “fruit” and just bananas.
Eleven hours later we landed in Kona. Aloha, Hawaii!! We meandered over to baggage to pick up our priority bags and discovered that “priority” doesn’t see to have any meaning on Air Canada Vacations. First off the plane were the over-sized bags from which I learned there are two kinds of people who travel to Kona in mid-February: People with babies and golfers. At least the golfers will be somewhere other than where we will be… Jeff’s bag arrived shortly thereafter but mine didn’t get disgorged onto the conveyor until near then end. Turns out it wasn’t because priority has no meaning, it was because my priority tag had been ripped off my baggage. On the other hand, they managed not to rip the wheels off my suitcase, so I consider it a win.
Priorities
We drove two hours around the north coast of Big Island to our hotel in Hilo where we are staying for 3 nights. We had a very lovely dinner (Sunfish wrapped in a Ti leaf) and poured over travel brochures to plan out tomorrow. Looks like a volcano day. Andi will be jealous.
Important Safety Tip
Sounds like your first day was better than ours! Enjoy! Xox
That’s a long day! Glad the perks outweighed the annoyances 🙂