Overview | Things To Do | Food | Itinerary | Budget
Overview
After over a full year into the pandemic, I was feeling antsy and the need to travel. When you love travel as much as I do, it becomes something that is more of a need than a want – and not being able to even travel to Canada to visit my family this last year has been hard. I consider ourselves extremely lucky to be able to go to Hawaii still (living in the USA).
I booked this trip relatively last minute, as I wasn’t having much luck with pre-planning trips in the last year (so many cancelled trips!). We booked through Costco Travel, and in the 3 days it took us to decide to travel, the prices had increased a few hundred dollars on the packages. With travel restrictions in place, Hawaii was quickly becoming a very popular destination for Americans to visit. We almost always fly Alaska when we can when flying domestic, and the Alaska direct flights to Hawaii were almost $1,000 more than the Hawaiian Airlines flights – definitely not frugal traveling!
Cost: Hawaii is one of the most expensive places you can travel. I did some calculations and found that the Costco Travel packages (which include car rental, hotel and flight) were cheaper than booking those things individually. The total cost of our trip was $4,013 for two people and 7 days. The Costco package was $2,600, and the rest of the cost was food, gas, and activities. For a full breakdown of cost, jump to the budget section.
COVID-19: When we went to Maui (April 2021), Hawaii was requiring a negative COVID-19 test from a partner testing facility taken within 72 hours of the date and time your final leg of your flight is scheduled to depart. This really stressed me out, I was worried about not being able to get a negative test in time, and worried about the process and messing something up. It all worked out in the end, and we got our tests from a free testing location in Seattle. https://hawaiicovid19.com/travel/ has all of the information you need, including approved locations. You need to create an account on Safe Travels Hawaii, and fill in the information on your trip. Within 24 hours before your flight is scheduled to leave, you have to upload the negative test result (in the right format) so it can be verified. I would also highly recommend printing out your test results as well and having a hard copy with you.
Where we stayed: We picked the cheapest hotel option in the Costco Travel package which was the Royal Kahana Maui by Outrigger. It was an okay place to stay – it was dated and old, and you could tell that it needed a major update. It is a complex of owned condos that are rented out, so the condo we ended up with may have been luck of the draw. It did have a full kitchen, living room, and washer and dryer, and parking was included in the price. This was a great bonus, as we were able to buy groceries and save money by having breakfast and snacks at the hotel every day, plus we could do our laundry halfway through the trip to pack less. In the end, we had a nice ocean view, and we survived the extremely uncomfortable bed.
Note: this hotel has no beach. Ocean swells have led to the beach in that area being completely washed away. Don’t stay here if you want to be close to the beach. Luckily there are lots of great beaches within a 5-10 minute drive. There was also a required $270 cleaning fee we had to pay in addition to our stay.
Things To Do
For a full list of things we saw, check out the itinerary. Our favorite things we did during our trip included:
- Road to Hana: I was super nervous about doing the Road to Hana on my own (vs with a tour), but after doing lots of research (and seeing the cost of the tours), we decided to drive it on our own. At a high level, it’s totally doable on your own, but is a very long, exhausting day. Get the Maui GyPSy app, and it will guide you through the Road to Hana with relative ease. I outlined where we stopped in the itinerary on Day 4.
- Haleakala Sunrise: Haleakala is work visiting on your trip to Maui. We decided to try to snag Sunrise tickets (which open in advance and sell out almost immediately. During COVID-19, they open 2 weeks ahead of time). This meant we had to get up at 3:00AM to get there in time for the sunrise. By the time we were there, it was pretty busy, and unfortunately there were high clouds that meant there was no sunrise for us to see. Despite the lack of sunrise (and therefore unnecessary 3:00AM wakeup call…), we loved Haleakala. We took our time exploring the park and visiting the viewpoints on the way down. We used the Maui GyPSy app to help with guidance.
- If you’re planning on doing the sunrise, set an alarm for 5 minutes before the tickets open up have the page up and ready to refresh. Make an account or log in ahead of time to accelerate the checkout process. You can get the sunrise tickets here. The sunrise reservations cost $1, and when you get to the park you will be required to pay $30 for entry. The $30 entry fee is valid for 72 hours, which is perfect if you are planning to do the Road to Hana in the next few days.
- Beach Hopping: To keep our vacation relaxing, we spaced out our busy days with beach hopping days. One day we focused on the South Maui beaches (our favorite beach was Wailea Beach), and the other day we did West Maui (our favorite beach was Kapalua Bay Beach). I highly recommend renting beach chairs from Snorkel Bob’s. There are locations all over the island, and they are affordable! I recommend reserving chairs ahead of time, as they do sell out. Having an umbrella and beach chairs made beach hopping perfect! For a full rundown of all the beaches we checked out, look at the itinerary.
- Snorkel Boat Tour: We really wanted to go snorkeling, so we decided to do a snorkeling boat tour of Molokini and Turtle Town to make it more of an outing, with the bonus of possibly seeing whales. By the time we booked our trip, the cheaper tour was sold out, so we ended up on the Calypso boat tour (which was more expensive). The tours include breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately, we had choppy water, so we couldn’t explore Molokini, and my husband got quite seasick despite loading up on Dramamine and ginger! I felt well enough to snorkel at Turtle Town and saw a handful of big turtles.
Food
Food in Hawaii is expensive! We spent ~$100 each day on food when you average it out (and this is with us buying groceries for snacks and breakfast). I’d say anytime you’re going to grab food (even if you think it’ll be cheap), it’ll probably cost you ~$25/pp. Despite this, there were definitely some standout places to eat that I’d highly recommend:
- Merriman’s Kapalua: We went to Merriman’s on the last night of our trip. You have to book reservations about a month in advance, and we booked a 5:00 reservations so we could watch the sunset. We did the prixe fixe menu which was incredible (and very filling) at $95 pp. I would highly recommend budgeting for this splurge meal if you can!
- Flatbread Company: We stopped here on the way back from the Road to Hana and I’m so glad we did! Super delicious flatbread pizzas, great services and SO yummy! Pretty good bang for your buck too!
- Leoda’s Pies: This is a perfect place to stop en route to other activities. The pie is super great – we liked the cream pies the most. Grab one to snack on in the car (they are ‘individual size’) and grab one or two to put in the fridge for later. We stopped twice. They also have sandwiches and other food.
- Aunt Sandy’s Banana Bread: If you are going to be doing the Road to Hana, this is a must-stop. We initially grabbed one banana bread ($7) and a smoothie, but after we tasted the banana bread, we went back and grabbed two more!
- Gazebo: If you are going to be in West Maui, Gazebo is a great breakfast/lunch location! It’s literally a gazebo at the back of a hotel. The lines are always long – we waited about an hour, but it’s worth it if you can wait. Get the Macadamia pancakes and some fried rice! Yum!
- Joey’s Kitchen: There are two Joey’s locations in Maui. We didn’t have to wait too long for a table (there aren’t many tables), and it was so good! We grabbed the garlic chicken and the short ribs – both were amazing!
