I love cats. Not just your normal love, but the all-in, unconditional, borderline obsessive kind of love.

I just can’t help it. Cats are perfect in my eyes. They are cuddly without being too large. They are independent – I don’t need to clean them, take them on walks or worry about leaving them alone for long hours. They have all the spunk – they do what they want, when they want, how they want. Cats are my spirit animal.

So when Luke and Leslie said they were taking a day off of work during our visit and suggested we go to Lanai – home of Hawaii’s cat sanctuary – I jumped with joy. Who cares if I know nothing else about Lanai? Lanai has cats and therefore is it imperative that we go.

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From Honolulu, there is only one way to get to Lanai: via plane. I booked all four of our tickets for Friday morning to Lanai and returning late Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, I made a bit of a mistake when buying the tickets…

…I bought Luke’s ticket under the wrong name.

I know, I know. He’s my brother and I have known him for over 27 years and there’s really no excuse. Except, who remembers that Luke is not Luke’s real name?!?! And, for that matter, who names their child Lukas when his entire life every single human to ever address him has called him Luke?!?! See, the real people to blame here are Mom and Dad, not me for my teeny-tiny error.

Anyways, the mistake was made and I called Hawaiian Airlines and was told there was nothing they could do to fix it. They advised arriving early to the airport so that Luke could undergo additional TSA security. As you might imagine, Luke was not quite pleased with me. Oops.

But good news! Our trip to Lanai was not thwarted by the plane ticket name mistake…TSA barely glanced at Luke’s ticket. American security at it’s finest 🙂

After plenty of waiting time (we really did get to the airport quite early), we finally boarded the plane to head to Lanai.

Lanai is small. It is probably the smallest airport I have ever been at. There is one “gate” and there are 2-3 flights that leave on any given day. The TSA checkpoint is one guy that works part-time. No seriously, they do not even have TSA security open during most of the day – only about an hour or so before each flight.

(Honestly, after describing the Lanai airport, I have to change my statement. It is most definitely the smallest airport I have ever been to.)

Although Lanai is small, it is beautiful. Our first stop in Lanai was Hulopo’e Beach. We walked to the beach from the Four Seasons Resort.

(Complete side note, but if you casually happen to be rolling in the dough I highly recommend visiting this resort. Maybe someday when I marry rich I’ll make it there… JK! Love you the most Andy!)

Although it pains me to say this, Luke definitely made the right decision when it came to beach time. He was the only one who actually brought his bathing suit. The rest of us didn’t want to have to lug around a change of clothes and a towel.

When we made it the beach, Luke immediately ran into the water while the rest of us stared longingly from the sand.

I cannot express to you the amount of jealousy I had. The beach was GORGEOUS and the water looked sooo inviting. Andy and I waded in, but it really just was not the same.

We could have spent all day at the beach. If you go to Lanai this is for sure a must-see.

After the beach, we headed back to downtown Lanai for lunch. “Downtown” Lanai is four streets in the shape of a square with some restaurants, stores and buildings. You can essentially hit everything in about 15-20 minutes.

Of course, we had to stop at the Bank of Hawaii for Luke and Leslie. We went inside and chatted with the workers (or Luke and Leslie’s “co-workers”?).

In the middle of the downtown is a big green space called “Dole Park.”

Yes, this is the same Dole as the pineapple company. You know what that means, right? HISTORY LESSON TIME!! WOOOO!

Okay so here is goes: Although Lanai was inhabited by native Hawaiians for about 800 years, in the 1800’s the native population began to decline. This occurred simultaneously with the effort to encourage commercial agriculture on Lanai. In 1922, Dole (the pineapple company) purchased the island and a pineapple plantation was developed.

Now, I’m not talking a baby pineapple plantation. This was a massive, kingdom-like plantation. In fact, it was the world’s largest pineapple plantation. At one point there were over 16,000 acres of pineapple plantations.

Do you know how big that is for an island the size of Lanai?!? Lanai is only 140 square miles, so almost 18% of the entire island was covered by a pineapple plantation!!

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise how big of an impact the pineapple industry has had on Lanai and it’s culture. Almost everyone made a living from the plantation and the jobs brought a ton of diversity to the island, particularly via Japanese and Filipino workers.  Lanai is proud of their pineapple heritage and they gladly call themselves the pineapple island.

The crazy part is that you would think with this rich pineapple history that pineapples would still be flourishing on the island. Except it is the exact opposite. Besides the stories from the locals and the culture center, pineapples have been effectively erased from the island. Our taxi driver told us there are only currently ten pineapple trees. TEN!!! How do you go from 16,000 acres to 10 measly tress?!?!

Well, apparently in 1961 Castle & Cooke (a real estate company) bought Dole, meaning that they also gained ownership of Lanai. In 1973, Castle & Cooke announced their plans to transform Lanai into an island resort, as opposed to a pineapple plantation. The last pineapple harvest occurred in 1992. Bye bye pineapples. 😦

A luxury hotel was built around this time period (early 1990s) and in the early 2000’s it became the Four Season Resort Lanai (see glorious pictures at the beginning on the blog post for further context). In 2012, Larry Ellison bought the island from Castle & Cooke for $300 million [the same Larry Ellison that co-founded Oracle…just ya know the fifth wealthiest person in the United States #somuchmoney].

When we visited the island, it was clear that the islanders were still unsure about Ellison and his plans, although they did seem cautiously optimistic. He renovated the historic movie theater in town (which, according to our taxi driver, cost a whopping $4 million). The island gets two new movies every Friday and it is apparently very glamorous on the inside.

It’s so strange for me to think that the city I live in (and its surrounding areas) could be owned by someone that is not the government. Even weirder, apparently Ellison only owns 98% of the island and the other 2% is owned by the state and residents (aka the residents that own their houses). Ellison clearly has massive power over the island.

Some other interesting facts about Lanai:

1. Although Lanai is 140 square miles, there are only 30 square miles of paved road. Everything else is essentially off-roading (Andy’s dream!!)

2. Every Thanksgiving, each family gets a free turkey and a bag of rice. (I assume this is courtesy of Ellison, although I did not confirm that with our taxi driver)

3. According to our taxi driver, there are not any homeless people in Lanai. Can you even imagine that?!

Okay history lesson over. But really, how interesting is Lanai!

After our tour of downtown, we headed to HEAVEN!!! And by heaven I mean THE CAT SANCTUARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (there is no such thing as too many exclamation marks for all the kities)

So I may or may not have geeked a bit when we got to the cat sanctuary.

THERE WERE CATS EVERYWHERE!!!!! ALMOST 600 CATS!!!!!!!

No words to even express my happiness.

The sanctuary was amazing. They had a “kitten-garden” and a “Cat-fur-teria.” They were also in the midst of building a “Senior Center” for their elderly cats. How adorable!

We spent several hours at the Cat Sanctuary. We would have stayed later, but unfortunately they closed at 3 PM (we were still there until 3:30 when we were finally kicked out haha).

Andy wouldn’t let me bring a cat home (wahhh!), but I did get this really great shirt! (shirt…cat…same thing right? haha).

We started to head back to the airport after our visit to heaven was over. According to google maps, we could walk along the road for 1.4 miles to get to the airport or we could take a back-way walking path that was only 1.1 miles to the airport. We discussed and decided to would try the walking path (as opposed to the street) since we weren’t in a rush and it would be nice to see another part of Lanai.

Google. Lied.

They lied! Just straight-up lied! I cannot even express the betrayal!

There was absolutely no “walking path.” Oh, it started off fine…it was a nice dirt path that sort of seemed to be taking us in the right direction.

Then the walking path split and google did not help in telling us where to go. And then all of a sudden there was absolutely no path and just overgrown fields.

No seriously, just picture us walking in what we hope is the right direction, looking for any resemblance of a path to lead us. Amazingly, google does not seem to provide good directions in the middle of nowhere. Geez google, what is the point of giving you access to my whole life if you can’t even help me in my time of need???

Then of course google tries to get us to literally walk through an electric fence. AN ELECTRIC FENCE!! Google how could you lead us so astray?!?!

This entire time, I’m panicking that our plane is going to take off before we get there (Mississippi PTSD…sigh).

Needless to say, our journey to the airport did not take the estimated 25 minutes. An hour later we finally get to the airport, sweaty and quite dirty. (Apparently hiking in fields does not lend itself to be a super clean activity). But we made it! Success!!

Overall, we had a wonderful time on our trip to Lanai. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also mention the not-so-great parts about Lanai.

1. Transportation around the island: This one is definitely the worst. There really is no easy way to get around the island. You need a car, but it was an absurd amount of money to rent a car for the day (upwards of $200). So your only other option is to take the “city shuttle” which costs $10 per person per trip. Except half the time they don’t answer their phone or they don’t come very quickly or they make you wait in the car while they drive other people to the exact opposite side of the island. Quite frustrating if you must know.
2. General activities: There isn’t a ton to do on the island, which isn’t that big of a deal. However, pretty much everything local is closed by 4PM. So as a visitor, you’re pretty pigeon-holed in terms of options, particularly in late afternoon and the evening time frame.
3. Transportation leaving the island: Around noon, we received an email from Hawaiian Airlines that stated our departing flight which was scheduled to leave at 4:30 PM would not be leaving until 6:30 PM. There was absolutely no explanation or reason for this and apparently it happens quite frequently. Normally a two-hour delay wouldn’t be terrible, but given the above issues we couldn’t really go anywhere and, even if we could, nothing would be open! Thus, we spent a good 1.5 hours sitting on chairs at the tiny Lanai airport. Good times.

 

In conclusion: Go to Lanai! Especially if you are rich and can afford one of the swanky resorts. If not, check out the local bed and breakfast. And, of course, you must must must visit the cats. 🙂

P.S. In honor of all the cats, I must show this wonderful photo of RJ with me as I write this post. Cats are just the greatest ❤ ❤ ❤