And then there was the morning, as we woke up, sat at the table, took a sip of coffee, looked at each other and both new: We have to leave the island! Fast!
It was on week before I would regularly fly back to Germany and more than two weeks earlier than his departure to the other side of the earth. But things started to get weird out there, it felt like soon the earth would stop turning. A virus made the world go crazy and fearful.
We tried to call our airlines, our travel agencies, but we guessed: the Corona pandemic brought the travelling industry to a hotline-breakdown. We had to handle „the escape“ ourselves. We needed a flight from the west coast of the United States to Europe. Supposedly to the UK, after the travel-ban at that time affected just the mainland Europe. San Francisco to London should be a save and common route.
We searched on both our laptops, on both our phones, trying to get the cheapest and most convenient quote while fooling the cookies. We cookie monsters! And then something unbelievable happened: We found a $110-flight with Finnair with perfect departure times and transit durations. We could hardly believe, made Finnair revues researches and booked quickly, to not let the opportunity slip away.
Next step was booking the flight from Kaua’i to San Francisco, where I could use United-Airline-miles for my ticket. So what just happend?! We bought a trip for two people from Lihue to London for about $400 – un-freakin-believable!! Than the big packing started, we had 36 hours left on the island. Panic – not at all. Boxes and suitcases had to be arranged. We had to finish chores and errands and paperwork. We were just functioning. Everything was cool.
On the next day we got ready quite easy, went to meet family and started in the evening towards our upcoming adventure. And we had no idea what was expecting us…
