I am not a very organized traveler. I rarely purchase a package trip, you know, where the flight, hotel and rental car are all included. I also don’t book tours, largely because they are too structured and too limiting.
I did, earlier in my life. I must confess that I’ve done the cruise ship thing, goaded into booking a 10-day journey through hell. Well, the hell part was only in the room aboard the ship, since I was traveling with Psycho. The ship was doing a repositioning through the Panama Canal. Wait, that was hell, too.
I also once booked a tour. Being new to the Hawaiian Islands, I was talked into doing a tour to an “authentic” Hawaiian luau on Oahu. You know the gig. They stick a wild pig in the ground, cook it for hours, maybe even days, then have you stand in line with all the other touristas so that you can get your tiny plate of greasy, fatty pig-in-a-pit. Then you get the “honor” of washington “natives” perform a hula dance, spin some fire and do whatever else Hawaiians do to suck money from mainlanders.
I’m not really sure why I don’t like tours. Perhaps it’s the whole sit on the bus with strangers thing. Or the fact that you have to go where the tour leader says you must go, rather stop on a whim just because you saw something cool. Or it could just be the fact that it’s a canned experience of the destination. They (whoever they are), show you what they want to show you, steer you to restaurants and retailers who give them a kickback, and boringly recite the same drivel over and over in a monotone, “I don’t really give a sh** that you’re here, Disney Jungle Ride voice.
In the case of the luau, the tour leader wanted us to call each other “Family.” She even had us practice it over and over again, like we were school age children learning the word for the first time.
I can guarantee you that no one on this bus was my family. They must have been two or three steps away from graveside services and my droning “sister” at the front of the bus was giving me a splitting headache with her banter.
I never thought we’d get to the luau. We kept driving through the streets of the island, like the driver was lost or something. It’s an island, for god’s sake. If you miss a turn just keep going, you’ll come around again.
Finally, finally, we arrived in the parking lot. Everyone in the “family” climbed down out of the bus and headed into the luau. It was like watching cattle be herded to slaughter.
To keep us from wanting all our money back, the very smart tour company offered free booze. This sounds better than it really is, largely because the drinks they served were very blue.
As George Carlin once cautioned, there is no blue food. Even blueberries are purple. Blue is not a natural color for liquids either, as I would come to find out. Still, the booze might make me like the luau better, and stop thinking about the long bus ride home with the rest of the family.
I took two Blue Hawaiians. I drank them quickly, then drank another two. They were long on the blue and short on Hawaiians. I couldn’t taste any booze in these things. I can only assume they were using some grain alcohol as the fuel – it definitely wasn’t vodka.
After the eighth Blue Hawaiian I finally got a buzz, which was good, because it was time to eat greasy pig in a poke. I thought briefly about not going through the line, but then the hostess saw me and made sure I didn’t miss out on this important(?) cultural(?) experience.
As usual, I ended up with a lot of fatty pig, pulled from some part of the pig that I am certain they don’t sell in grocery stores. The hostess was right behind me, telling me not to miss out on the breadfruit (which has no real taste) and poi (which tastes like the white paste I used to eat in elementary school).
Luckily, I found my date and we found a place to sit away from the family. I gritted my teeth and gutted down some of the pig, knowing that a trip to McDonalds would be in the plan when we got back to the condo.
Showtime. I braced myself for some Hawaiian girls in grass skirts, moving their arms to and fro as the narrator made up some story about what they were actually saying. Surprise, surprise, they asked for volunteers and several of “family” members jumped up on stage.
Things couldn’t get worse. If only they had the Polynesian girls, the ones from Tahiti, with all the hip jiggling. Now there’s some entertainment.
As the sun began to set, a poi boy in a tablecloth walked out on the beach and blew on the conch shell. It was time for our tour to end.
Thank god. Like the famed Gilligan’s Island tour, we had just gone on a three-hour tour that was nothing short of a nightmare. The “family,” stuffed to the gills with blue booze and pig, hopped on the bus singing Tiny Bubbles. I made my way to the back, trying my best to avoid any eye contact with our hostess.
Now you can see why I don’t do tours. I would much rather drive down the road myself, spot a locals bar, have a few drinks with the locals and find out where the real destination is, the ones the tourists never get to see during their 8 to 5 tour schedule. That is the real adventure, the real experience. If I wanted canned entertainment and faux cultural experiences, I can always go to EPCOT.
In the Emerald City, waiting for the sun to go down so all the tourists get the hell out of town,
– Robb