Travel Diary: Islands of Hawaii, 2021

As a veteran traveler, I'm always looking forward to a new trip, wherever it may be. I was recently lucky enough to travel to beautiful Hawaii where I visited both Kauai and Oahu and wanted to share my experience with the latest protocols, though they are changing constantly.

When traveling to Hawaii, we had a connection in Denver and were able to get “pre-screened” for our arrival on Kauai. I would suggest having travelers locate this service upon arrival at their connection as we did walk around first and the line was long by that point. We were still able to get it with time to spare but some did miss out as they had to board their flight. Once you are pre-screened you will get a wristband allowing you to bypass the screening process when you arrive on the island. some friends of ours also did this in LA and felt it was very helpful.

On Kauai, we needed to show our travel.hawaii.gov QR code when checking into the hotel. Masks did need to be worn in most indoor places, but once you sat down at a restaurant you could remove them. We did not have an issue getting into most places, there seemed to be much fewer visitors overall.

On Oahu, you needed to show your ID and vaccine card to get into most places and they were very strict on masks. You also needed the QR code from the website. There were also a lot less people but the locals seemed happy to have visitors.

We visited Pearl Harbor and it is set up differently as they are not using the indoor theater for the movie and I wish we would have been able to watch the movie first before going on the boat. It was still amazing but I do feel it was most powerful with the movie first. 

Hint: Use an email you have easy access to for travel.hawaii.gov. We needed to sign in a few times and it would send a verification code to your email to login.