Golly Gee!! I found us a rental car!!!!

So on past visits to the Big Island of Hawaii we've never had ANY problems with locating a rental car. None. Not even a hint of difficulty. This trip has been different.

Prior to leaving I went through all of the online reservation pages for ALL possible car rental agencies and came up with absolutely nothing. Nadda. Zilch. Not even a sniff.

Marc figured we'd have no problem once we'd arrived and settled in with our friends. We arrived late Thursday evening and by Saturday Marc and I were circling the airport rental car locations trying to locate anything - even tho' a Jeep Wrangler is totally the required vehicle! Late that night we saw a few cars in the parking lot near an independent agent's location and yesterday morning bright and early we headed there again. The fellow who operates the business was washing his vehicle in the lot and told us that it would simply be first come first served first thing Monday morning.

So this morning, after I dropped Marc and the girls off at the dive shop for their big boat dive, I headed over to that location once again. Darn - already a vehicle of people sitting in the parking lot. (Hmm, two of them are elderly - surely they wouldn't be interested in the Wrangler sitting there!) After a bit of a wait (don't ever expect a business to open on time anywhere in Hawaii - island time and all that - I was successful! And the Jeep Wrangler!!! Who cares that it wasn't equipped with the rear and side windows. It had four tires, room for four, and looked as tho' it wouldn't break down upon leaving the lot.

Turns out the major car rental companies, in their infinite wisdom, decided that with the economic downturn they'd be smart and ship what they considered to be extraneous numbers of cars off island. And I've been told this is the situation on all of the Hawaiian islands. So - if you're planning a trip my suggestion is to first rent your car. Then book your flights.

(And we went on a fabulous snorkeling/whale watching trip yesterday with our hosts, Kevin and Claudia Merrill who own Dolphin Discoveries.
Wonderful day and we saw a few whales and lots of dolphins and even a manta ray!! I'm not a water girl - I'm waiting for my part of the trip when we head to Kilauea!!)