Hawaii Trip - Day 1 (November 26, 2008)

It was about 1 degree Celsius and chance of rain/flurries mix on this Wednesday morning. We woke up at 6am to catch our 9am flight to Toronto. Our friend, Stephen showed up at our door steps at 7:15am and we hit the road. We got into the usual rush hour traffic on Woodroffe and Fallowfield, but by 8am we were at the airport. The check-in and security check went smoothly and we had lots of time to spare, we even shopped a bit too! We finally got on our first flight of the day to Toronto, however, due to the just above freezing temperature, our plane had to use the de-icing system. Of course, our flight was delayed a bit. Since we only had just over an hour and a bit time to catch our next flight to Vancouver, we were rushing a bit. We were really worried about our check-in luggage.... By the end we got to the gate, we found out that the Vancouver was also delayed for about 15 minutes or so, and when we got there they hadn't even started boarding anyone. Then, we felt much better.

After a long flight (close to 5 hours), we had arrived to Vancouver. The Vancouver airport is under renovation and it was kind of confusing for us to find the US transfer (also for our luggage to find US transfer...story to follow). We finally found it at the end and we were very lucky that it wasn't busy at all at the US custom. Once we had gone through US custom, we were supposed to pick up our luggage for the transfer. We must have waited over an hour and there was still no sign of our luggage. We got really worried as we would be flying out to the Big Island the next day, we wouldn't want to have no clean clothes and no snorkeling gears with us. Anyway, we reported this issue to the Air Canada ground crew member. Since our flight would be departing soon, we were forced to board our flight without our luggage. Just before we boarded our flight, the ground crew member told us that our luggage was at the domestic baggage claim. And he was trying to get it to our flight before the flight departure. So, when we were sitting in our seats worrying about our luggage, I saw this lonely luggage in a cart ridding close to our flight. I told Richard that must be our luggage, although I wouldn't really tell if it was our bag as our bag is black in colour, just like everyone's bag.

After a bumpy, another 6-hour ride later, we had finally arrived at Honolulu, Oahu. One would have thought that if your luggage was the last one in, it should be first one out, right?! Guess what, that wasn't the case. We saw others picked up their luggages and we were still waiting. We must have waited half an hour (or it seemed like half an hour), and finally it showed up. We were so happy that it came with us! (the luggage sounded like our pet for a moment there :D) By that time, we were extremely tired, we'd been on the planes for over 10 hours and it was 1am Ottawa time. We called up our hotel for shuttle and rested up for the early morning again the next day.