When we started telling our family and friends of our plans to leave our jobs, homes, vehicles, pets, and entire lives behind to take a year off to travel, not too many people took us seriously. It’s not that we needed to convince others anyways but we found our hardest crowd to sway was our family and coworkers. Will was going to quit his job as a Process Operator in the oilsands and Paulina was going to take a leave of absence (LOA) from her career as a Process Engineer. Questions and statements were flying from everyone such as “how can you afford this?”, “what’s your plan?”, and “a year is too long!” Will’s coworkers were even placing bets on when Will would be “crawling” back to his job. At first we didn’t feel like we had the most positive support from peers on our decision except for a handful of people.

To be honest, we didn’t know how we would afford this year off, what our plan was and how long seemed like the right amount of time to be gone. However, we had set our minds to it and we were going to push hard over the next few months to get our responsibilities organized so we could start this journey. As the months and days grew closer to our departure date, everyone finally started appreciating the value a gap year can provide to personal growth. We have learned that many people are uncomfortable with change, some are projecting their own personal fears on us, and others are just stuck in their present with no plan to grow and develop.

After watching Paulina’s mom, Yoyo, break down in a puddle of tears at the YMM airport, it definitely pulled on our heart strings and it set in that we may not be seeing our loved ones for quite some time. Ironically though, we’d actually be seeing Paulina’s family in only five days in Hawaii so there was no reason to cry now, the goodbye before the big trip was still yet to come! The only things we were saying goodbye forever to at that point was our consumer based life, the societal expectations that were pressured on us and fear of the unknown and unplanned.

It was very exciting to arrive in Hawaii, especially when Will learned that Hawaii was an island! Travelling is definitely one of the best ways to give anyone an appreciation for culture and a few good lessons in geography. We spent the course of the next ten days with family enjoying meals, beach time, snorkelling with sea turtles, whale watching and sightseeing in and around Lahaina, Maui. Maui was one of our first travel spots and this island was very beautiful and full of great places to explore. The beaches on the west coast had some of the best snorkelling we have ever done! Where else in the world can you swim within inches of multiple giant sea turtles in their natural environment? The west and east side of the island were same-same but different. Both equally worth exploring but be aware… as you head east the road to Hana can get quite windy. We had to pull over a few times to easy the pain of motion sickness in the car as we were sightseeing.

A fun little project we were asked to do in the downtime of enjoying Maui was to show Flat Stanley around the island and send him back to Canada in one piece. This was a project for Will’s niece, Zanaya, to help her and her classmates learn about different places in and outside of Canada. Although we got a few odd stares from bystanders, we had no problems playing around like kids and showing Flat Stanley around.

We also liked walking around and checking out real estate. We saw an open house along the beach and figured we would check it out. It ended up being on the market for $4.9M and recently had $600k in renovations. We were shocked to see those kinds of price tags but for a beachfront property in Hawaii it is normal. We talked with the realtor, Todd Hudson, who told us about some other successful vacation properties in Maui but also stressed the importance of good and consistent property management if you wanted to delve into that business.

Our trip had started off with quality time with family and now we were departing for our next destination. We said our goodbyes to the Hubert’s, since they were leaving a day early, and put our heads together to figure out how we were going to get to the airport on a budget. TripAdvisor had said there was a $1 local bus from the airport to Lahaina but we had learned on our way there that the buses would not take us with our backpacks. Instead, the only other option from the airport was a shuttle for $67 or renting a vehicle which we were unimpressed with. Fortunately, Hawaii is known for its friendly hitchhiking and we had our camping gear so we’d head in the general direction and sleep on Kanaha Beach near the airport. We had two days to get to our flight which was plenty of time in case the unexpected happened. This would be the first time we had hitchhiked and Paulina’s dad gave us the advise to “make sure you look good and clean.”

Leaving the next morning and walking into a gorgeous sun shower was a decent start. We ended up walking for about an hour through Lahaina and found a nice pull over spot where cars could safely pick us up along the highway. Will was first up to try and flag down a car. Tons of vehicles passed us and it’s funny how we immediately started to feel personally offended to be rejected that much. So Paulina came to the plate, although Will wanted to keep moving, she said “Just give me five minutes!” and BAM! she had our first car.

Thumb warriors first piece of advice, a little patience and giving vehicles a safe place to pullover can really increase your chances of getting picked up.

Our first ride was from a really warm, welcoming local named Nate … who happened to be covered in tats from head to toe, wearing camo and in a beat up truck. But we were not passing judgement just as we hoped people wouldn’t pass judgement on us as we were hitchhiking. Nate couldn’t take us all the way to Kahului but we covered tons of ground since he took us to the major intersection; 34km out of the 39km was done! We said a quick thank you and goodbye, hopped out of the back of the truck and crossed a super busy interchange of vehicles going all directions. Jokingly, Paulina held her thumb out as we crossed the intersection and surprisingly flagged down our second ride in record time.

Our next ride was an elderly couple from the United States who owns multiple vacation rentals in Maui. We chatted with them about our trip and they shared with us about how great vacation rentals here were. Getting free, experienced advice is always a great treat. They had sold about 25 apartments in parts of Wisconsin and California and reinvested in two vacation rentals in Maui and were much more successful! Since we had made such great traction and it was still early in the morning, the couple detoured and ended up dropping us off at a great little trail called Needle Point in Yao to hike before heading to our campsite. As we left the car we asked if they pick up hitchhikers often. Their reply,

“Well you guys didn’t have dreadlocks and you look like you take care of yourselves.” BAM! Thumb warriors second piece of advice.

After a short hike and some great views, we headed back down the mountain toward town. We met these other Canadian and German backpackers who were just finishing up the sights as well. We decided to spread apart so that we could increase our chances on our hitchhiking roll.

Thumb warriors third piece, travel in safe but small groups of two.

Success! We were picked up by a young mother and her two youngins. She was a native of Hawaii and filled us in on how the island works … through her eyes. We were quite detoured with her “cruising” around and chatting. She seemed to just want some adult company and people to tell her stories to.  She filled us in about high school and heavy use of “ice” and alcohol, moving to Washington to get cleaned up, and eventually coming back to restart in Maui. After running a few red lights and a stop sign we eventually had to ask her to get us back on track towards the beach campground. We were surprised to see the campground was turned into a homeless tented town with no sure safety for our belongings or ourselves. So on to Plan B … but what was Plan B? We started walking to the airport to find wifi but found that the road between the airport and campground had a massive flood and the water smelt like sewage so we didn’t want to cross. As we were cheering for the cars that were making it across we were also rooting for other cars to try. An older American was headed there to drop off their rental vehicle but was too scared to flood the car and decided to turn around and take the longer route. So Paulina asked if they’d give us a ride and they did!

Still on a mission for WiFi they dropped us off in town where we came by a nice air conditioned coffee shop. We ended up looking up hostels, hotels, and B&Bs but nothing was very close to the airport and within budget. We almost came to the conclusion of just pitching our tent very close to the terminal without being caught. But we ended up meeting this beautiful couple who spotted us in the coffee shop, Alex and Hermy. He was from the mainland and she was from the Philippines. We got the scoop of their past and learned how there relationship has grown over 25 years of marriage. We asked for marriage advice and they shared they believe in making an effort to have time alone. They told us once a week they have a breakfast, coffee or dinner date outside their home or about their friends who put their kids to bed at 8 PM so they can have adult time.

We really hit it off with Alex and Hermy and they wanted to show us around town. Having snow cones at a locals favorite place was a surprise for both of us and on top of that they invited us over for dinner. Alex was a cook and Paulina latched on to him learning how to make fresh buns, cream sauces, roast chicken and other deliciousness. Meeting the family was great, full of music, cooking and playing with their grandchildren who were very affectionate.

Thumb warriors fourth piece of advice, coffee shops are great places to make connections with people who will go out of their way to help a new friend out.

After our home cooked dinner we were openly welcomed to camp at a member of Alex’s church who had some warehouse property. The facility was used to host various Christian groups and at this time had a group of young adolescents from all over the globe, Surfing the Nations, who stayed to learn to surf and spread the love of Jesus. We ended up coming in late so our introductions didn’t make it through everyone but it seemed like a great group of kids. Our first tenting experience outside of Canada and we were on a nice dry concrete pad with a flight to catch in the morning.

Looking forward to new experiences always gets us motivated. We ended up arriving at the airport only to be informed 40 minutes before our flight was leaving that Japan was not going to accept us due to the fact we had no outbound ticket. So we ran to the nearest computer in the airport to book a cheap, random flight to Korea … which was never part of our “plan” for our one year trip. The attendants ran us through security and some back doors and with barely minutes to spare we made it on the plane, the last folks to board!

We caught our connecting flight over to Honolulu and sat down to reflect on what it is we want out of this trip. Hawaii was a first for us, so was being denied entry, and now we had set an intention that we would continue our thirst for firsts of anything!