Chapter II: Lana'i
A recount of life on one of Hawaii's lesser known islands.
After Los Cabos, my husband was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse: a promotion at a luxury resort on the island of Lana’i. To be fair, if you had mentioned this place to me beforehand, I wouldn’t have known it existed — because like most people, I had ever only known of Oahu and Maui. Lana’i is a small island, approximately 45 minute ferry ride from Maui, with a population of ~3,000 inhabitants. And fun fact: the island is more populated with axis deer (20,000 - 30,000) than it is with people. Did you also know that it’s one of the very few places that has no traffic lights at all? We lived on the island for almost 1.5 years, and during that time I learned the art of truly slowing down and resetting my nervous system. What was once weekly weekend trips to Maui to continue learning to surf, turned into spending more time immersing myself on Lana’i and appreciating it for what it was — a place where it felt like time was slowing down, and where every day was mostly the same routine, but looking back it was like living in an endless loop of stillness instead of the feeling of being on a never ending hamster wheel. I started to let go of the need to always “do something” and instead embrace “being.” My flights back to Los Angeles always felt jarring with its traffic, noise, and people everywhere.
Since the island was so small there was also a lack of housing, so we lived in the hotel the entire time we were there, along with other employees. What was it like living in a five-star hotel room for that period of time among guests who were shelling out thousands for the very same experience? Put it this way, in theory it is like paradise, waking up to the ocean view, and the sound of birds mixed with the sound of waves. I would log onto work at sunrise every day as I shifted my work hours to match PST, which meant 6am starts. But there were no kitchen amenities, which meant eating at the hotel every day and/or traveling into town to eat at the handful of restaurants on the island. I would rotate between The Break, Ganotisi’s for their fried chicken sandwiches and ube latte’s, Lana’i City Bar and Grill for their Happy Hour smashburgers, and Blue Ginger Cafe for their mahi burgers. If I really wanted to treat myself, lunch at Sensei or Malibu Farm. Let’s just say that eating the same thing every day for a year and a half gets old, so I ended up having to get a little … creative? (DM me if you want to know how.) And if you thought daily housekeeping was a thing, you were wrong. It was up to each of us to keep our rooms neat and tidy, and do our own laundry. In many ways it felt like being at a bougie summer camp.
My daily routine looked a little like this:
5.50am: Wake up to alarm and log on at 6am for work.
8am: Grab and go breakfast at the hotel. At the beginning I was eating musubis every day and didn’t realize how calorific they were until my pants didn’t fit. Turns out musubi and sushi are not one and the same. They’re more like distant cousins wrapped in seaweed.
Between 8am - 10am: Find a short window of time to go for a quick walk around the grounds in between meetings or during my lunch break.
2pm: Log off work have a late lunch onsite or take the shuttle into town.
4pm - 6pm: Walk outside the hotel around the golf course and private estates, and squeeze in a daily workout at the hotel gym followed by a dip on the beach (by far one of the quietest and cleanest beaches I’ve ever visited).
Our time in Lana’i was sadly cut short, as by then I was so used to the slow and steady pace of life that I didn’t want to leave. After awhile you realize how little the material things matter and how it’s the simple things, like the sun, sand, and nature, that is all you need. Living on Lana’i was like being in a real life watercolor painting, every day for a year. And for the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.