Last year, Air New Zealand celebrated its 10th birthday by offering customers huge discounts on flights to a number of destinations, including Hawaii.

After working out whether I could rob Peter to pay Paul, I deduced that I had enough cash saved to buy return flights for my husband, son & I to Hawaii for the paltry sum of around $2,800 NZD – this is fairly inexpensive when considering the distance travelled.

Hawai’i is a place I have always felt a connection to as a Polynesian (Niuean) afakasi and also hailing from New Zealand,  our indigenous people can be traced back Hawaiki.

The Māori word Hawaiki figures in legends about the arrival of the Māori in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The same concept appears in other Polynesian cultures, the name appearing variously as Havaiki, Havai’i, or ‘Avaiki in other Polynesian languages, though Hawaiki or the misspelling “Hawaiiki” appear to have become the most common variants used in English. The name of the Polynesian islands of Hawaiʻi (the ʻokina denoting a glottal stop that replaces the “k” in some Polynesian languages) preserves a cognate with Hawaiki.

So, I got to surprise my boys with a trip to Honolulu, booked for 2017. We decided that we’d take full advantage of this holiday and will be visiting Louisiana, California, New York and Nebraska as well as spending 6 days in beautiful Honolulu. We are in the US for a total of 28 days and the two week countdown has begun.

The place I’m looking forward to the most? New Orleans. I’ve always dreamed of being able to visit the French Quarter. It’s the one place away from New Zealand I’ve always felt a tremendous pull toward. I can only assume that this comes from, as long as I can remember, having an interest in the macabre, spiritual and metaphysical; Voodoo, Santeria and Hoodoo have always fascinated me and I have a deep reverence for the supernatural.

New Orleans has always figured intrinsically into supernatural stories and lore I read as a child. It’s also been voted one the most haunted cities in the United States by many publications.

I thought it might be useful to document our travels here and outline all of the special discounts we find along the way, the best way to travel on a budget and the best places to stay as a tourist in the cities we visit without a vehicle. I’ll also provide links and reviews on tours, shows and accomodation.

Mahalo!