Today I’m starting the year off right with my first international flight of the year to Guadalajara. Unfortunately this year will probably be much slower travel-wise than 2011, so I’ll have to see if I can work in a couple extra vacations at some point.
About to head out to Guadalajara for 8 days, time to see what the non-resort side of Mexico has to offer.
Pretty interesting read.
I’ve been thinking about making a trip to see the Northern Lights for quite awhile, maybe next winter will work out.
Interesting little device. If the price is right I may just have to pick one up next year.
Looking back on my travel this year, I have to say, 2011 has been one of my busiest years ever. So far this year I’ve went on vacations to:
I’ve thought about trying to fit another vacation in, but with a few upcoming work trips to Guadalajara, Mexico, I don’t think I’ll have the time. For next year the only thing we have planned is a 17 day tour of Great Britain and Ireland, which means I need to start planning another vacation at some point. The places I have in mind so far for next year are San Juan, San Diego or Salt Lake City. I haven’t come across any good deals yet, hopefully sometime in the next few months something will pop up.
With all of this travel I was finally able to earn Delta Platinum Medallion status (along with quite a few MQM’s I’ll be rolling over next year). I was also able to maintain my Hilton Diamond status, SPG Gold status and earn Hertz 5-Star status.
For our seventh and final day of our trip we decided to take a helicopter ride over the Big Island before taking our red-eye flight back home. After doing a bit of research on the best helicopter tour company I decided on Blue Hawaiian and we chose the Big Island Spectacular as our tour. This tour took us from Waikoloa up to the volcanoes where we were able to see some active lava flows…
From there the helicopter took us up the coast line where we were able to see some pretty spectacular waterfalls…
After being in the air for about an hour and a half we flew back to Waikoloa to end our tour. This was my first helicopter tour in Hawaii and I have to say, it was well worth it. From the ground we never would have had the opportunity to see an active lava flow or the waterfalls along the coast of the Big Island.
Overall this trip was action packed with a ton of different activities every day, but it was well worth the long flights to get there. Sooner or later I’ll have to make it back to check out some of the other islands!
The main reason we decided to go to the Big Island was to check out Volcanoes National Park. So, since we only had a couple days here we decided to spend all of our first day at the park. After about a 2 hour drive from Waikoloa through Hilo and on to the park, we started our tour at the Jagger Museum lookout of Kilauea…
After spending some time there we continued our drive of Crater Rim Drive, at least what we could, there were some road closures due to activity. After this drive we decided to also drive the Chain of Craters Road down to the Holei Sea Arch…
After a day full of driving we decided to finish are day by heading back to the hotel and grabbing a quick bite to eat at a hotel restaurant next to the hotel’s dolphin lagoon.
The morning of day 5 I got to enjoy sleeping in for the first time on our trip while Mandy went down to the spa at the Grand Wailea for a massage. After a lazy morning we made our way to the airport to catch our Hawaiian Airlines flight to the Big Island.
Once we landed on the Big Island and made it to Hertz, we noticed we were upgraded to a Mustang convertible. I was fine with this, but because of our experience on the Road to Hana in the Volvo, Mandy wanted to switch to an SUV. So, instead of the Mustang we ended up with a Jeep Liberty which was actually pretty nice. After a short drive from the airport to the Hilton Waikoloa Village we checked-in and took the tram to our room. That’s right, I said tram. This place is so big they have a boat and tram system to take you all around their property instead of walking. Once we got to our room I was pretty disappointed. After coming from Maui and the Grand Wailea, this hotel honestly looked like a dump to me. The decor looked old, their were no outlets next to the bed, the internet didn’t work and the bathroom was extremely small. After settling in we made our way to one of the outdoor restaurants on the property and had a quick bite to eat next to the dolphin lagoon. This was yet another let down for me. Service was really slow, food wasn’t anything to write home about and it was also pretty expensive for what it was.
As a loyal Hilton Diamond member for the last few years, I have to say, I was REALLY disappointed in everything the Hilton Waikoloa Village had to offer. If I ever make it back to the Big Island, I’ll definitely be looking for somewhere else to stay.
