MOLOKAI PART II: TRY, TRY AGAIN

Two days after we ended up back home i got a call from Honolulu Airport basically saying your bags are here, where are you? I told the nice baggage agent all about our aborted trip and she said ok, i’ll write down “clients decided not to travel”, which i thought was rather simplistic, but let it pass. Next she wanted to know what to do with these bags? I asked her to please send them back to the airport of origin a.s.a.p. and she said i can do that, i will put a RUSH on them and you should have them by tomorrow morning.

And that’s exactly what happened, early the next morning the bags arrived. (Apparently we should have had RUSH in big red letters on our foreheads when we were trying to get to Hawaii a few days ago.) Now we could finally re-book our trip. But this time we would be smart and have no checked bags, just carry-on. Seemed prudent. So we repacked, leaving a lot of stuff behind. I got on the phone to Alaska Airlines and was told most flights were full, but they could squeeze us into middle seats in front of the bathrooms way in the back of the plane if we wanted to leave the next day. Seeing as how it was way below zero and snowing outside, i said YES.

“Sometimes the magic works” is one of my husband’s favorite sayings. Trip #2 to Molokai seemed like it was going to work. Only this time we were not going through Seattle and Honolulu, but to Maui instead, and then on to Molokai. This meant overnighting in the Maui airport at Kahului, since our flight got in at 9 p.m. and the next flight to Molokai was at 6 a.m. Which for some reason didn’t seem so bad when we booked it, but proved otherwise.

As we deplaned, breathing in the tropical night air was so heavenly, at this point we were just happy to be in Hawaii. We walked across the parking lot to the Mokulele Air Terminal, an open-air building with rows of chairs and a few counters. There were bathrooms, a water fountain, a couple of vending machines and other travelers in the same boat we were. We tried sleeping on the benches but they were the kind that have arms between each seat. So we tried sitting up and sleeping. Never easy. The hours dragged on. Then around 3 a.m. a big burly security guard drove in on his electric cart, woke everyone and said you must go to the baggage claim area, you cannot stay here. Really? Why not? What were we hurting? Not that anyone dared ask.

Traipsing back to the main terminal we found ourselves wondering why we ever thought this was a good idea. Basically we came to the only conclusion: because we had looked into hotel rooms near the airport and they went for $350.00 or more per night. So we laid out in baggage claim, under the bright lights on cement benches with faux Hawaiian music blasting from the speakers above, backpacks for pillows, earplugs in our ears and tried to sleep. Torture. Morning could not come soon enough.

At 5 a.m. we dragged ourselves back to the Mokulele Air Terminal, washed up and were first in line for the 6 a.m. flight. I was never so happy to get on a Cessna 208 Caravan. This is a small utility turboprop aircraft seating only 8 passengers. Perfect for the airport on Molokai which is listed officially on Google Maps as “a tiny regional airport”. Our flight time was 30 minutes. And just like that we were transported from busy Maui to laid back Molokai – finally!

What happened next woke us from our no-sleep stupor, rudely thrusting us right into hyper adrenaline mode …