[Kona, HI, Oct 12, 2016]

Our Ragnar relay race was to take place on Friday, October 14th and Saturday, October 15th. We wanted to have extra time to get ready for the race and to explore a bit, so most of us decided to travel to Hawaii on Wednesday, October 12th. A lot of us were on a United flight directly to Kona, so the excitement grew as more and more people from our teams arrived at the gate.

When we got on our flight, we realized that most people on the plane were also going to Hawaii for Ragnar! When we got off the plane in Hawaii, we all got together for a group photo. The airport on the Big Island is small, so we disembarked the plane on the tarmac. We wanted to congregate there to take the photo, but airport employees ushered us into the “terminal”, if you could call it that – it’s pretty much open space, as you can see in the photo below. That’s a lot of Ragnarians!

Our first order of business was lunch. I knew of a great poke place Lena and I discovered on our last day on the Big Island in 2014. As a matter of fact, we were on the way to the airport when we stumbled upon Da Poke Shack! I was excited to go back! YUM!

Next, we went grocery shopping. May was driving, so she relegated selfie-taking to her co-pilot, Laura.

There were already 6 of us in the van plus all of our luggage, so fitting all the groceries in was, well, challenging!!! On top of this, it started to rain – a very common thing that happens in the afternoon in the tropics, but something that we in LA are completely unaccustomed to.

Playing tetris in the van

We ended up loading people in, then having them hold a bunch of bags in their lap. 🙂

Whew, we got it all in without getting completely drenched! 🙂

We were super excited to finally get to our AirBnB, which looked amazing in all the photos online. The whole team of 12 people was going to sleep here except for Lena, who was in a separate AirBnB with her parents. One thing we had to get accustomed to were all the bugs and insects! There were these red caterpillar-looking things all over – luckily, they were completely harmless.

The house was huge, but we most enjoyed all the seating outside. We had a great ocean view, and the sunset did not disappoint!

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For dinner, we went to Kona Brewery.

It felt so great to be back here on the Big Island. As my travels unexpectedly take me back to places I’ve visited before, I am starting to appreciate the benefits of traveling to a place that’s already familiar. I feel extra grateful to be able to come back and I am more relaxed since I’ve already covered most of what I’ve wanted to see on a previous trip. It’s also nice to revisit the previous trip and take note of how things have changed (or not) since the last visit. I loved being back here with some of my closest friends and getting to know the people on our team I didn’t know very well. What a great start to our trip!