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A couple times in each person’s life, we find a spot on this planet that sings to our soul – and breaks our heart each time we leave.
The Island of Lana’i is my, personal, love affair and I take every chance to share it with my favorite people. Pamela and I were married here nine years ago and we’ve probably been back more than forty times. In 2008, I think I spent over 120 days on the island, basking in the warm sun and scuba diving my guts out.
The flight from Honolulu to Lanai might as well be a trip on a time machine. You drop down out of the clouds and you land in Hawaii round about 1940. There’s one, small town on Lanai and the entire island has fewer than 4,000 inhabitants. There are no stoplights. No chain restaurants. No WalMart. No Seven-eleven. It’s a tiny place where everyone waves as they pass by on the road.
There are only about 500 hotel rooms on Lana’i and the elite hotel management chain, Four Seasons, accounts for almost all of them. There’s an ocean property with a gorgeous beach and a mountain property with breath-taking views of the banyan forests. It’s easy to see why Bill and Melinda Gates chose this as the place to hold their wedding ceremony.
There’s just no possible way to sample everything the island has to offer in one trip. Even if you stayed a month, you’d have a hard time getting it all done. Plus, who’d want to push it that hard? You’re on Lana’i, for heaven’s sake.
The jewel of the island is Hulopo’e Beach with its bleached sand, swaying palms and spinner dolphins frolicking in the bay. The smells of ocean, plumeria and hot dogs cooking on the grill swirl about the beach and the nearby, grassy camping area. Snorkeling right off Hulopo’e is fantastic, with parrotfish, dolphins and the occasional sea turtle joining swimmers in their play.
Of course, the scuba diving is off-the-hook. I love spearfishing and lobster diving too, and that’s utterly world class as well. A year or two back, I broke down and bought my own little dive boat and moored it on Lana’i, so that we could reach the most private and stunning dive sites. The swimming, sight-seeing, rock jumping, snorkeling and sunbathing is just about the best imaginable, especially off the deck of our boat.
For the landlubbers, there are miles of incredible hiking and mountain biking. Just walking around little Lana’i City – sampling the local cuisine and the adorable gift shops – is worth a full afternoon. Of course, the resorts offer amenities like fine dining, spa treatments, afternoon tea, massage and yoga.
Believe it or not, there’s spectacular year-round deer hunting on the island for rifle and bow hunters. For the non-hunters, there are tropical fruits hanging all over – several kinds of guava, citrus, banana and avocado to name a few.
I’m looking forward to sharing this little paradise with the winners of our Micro-business Showdown. We’ll be enjoying Lana’i for seven days and seven nights – all flights and rooms paid for by Micro-business Fanatic. Micro-palooza will keep to the island ethos: no onerous meeting schedules or pre-planned tours. We’ll all just chill and enjoy ourselves. Maybe we’ll slip in a few conversations about micro-business and to pick each others’ brains about where to take our businesses next. I’ll certainly be looking for feedback about Micro-business Fanatic. We’ll have dinner together a couple times at Manele Bay, the beach resort and generally just hang out together.
There’ll be open invitations to come out on my boat. If you’re scuba certified, and I recommend you certify if you’ve been thinking about it, we’ll do some diving and some spearfishing. If you’re not interested in probing the deep blue waters, come on the boat anyway to get yourself some sunbathing, snorkeling and sightseeing.
So, that’s Micro-palooza. Picture yourself with a bunch of other micro-business fanatics hanging out, playing it by ear and maybe chatting about business here and there.
Micro-palooza’s not for sale. The only way to get yourself some Micro-palooza goodness is to show up big in the Micro-business Showdown Game. It’s free, it’s fun and I’m counting on it being the greatest education of all time for micro-business folks.
And, if all that playing our game lands you on this island, playing in the surf, that’s pineapple in your Mai Tai.
Aloha!
Jayson Orvis
