You have not been to Kauai, and you have not taken a helicopter tour? What in blue blazes are you waiting for? connect on twitter needs to be at the top of everyone’s bucket record. No fooling, you basically should get out to the island, e book your tour, and just take a helicopter trip around the most attractive, enchanting, awe inspiring place on earth. Quit looking through this and connect with your travel agent, now!

All right, I’m a bit biased I truly flew Kauai tours for a number of yrs, and in the interest of comprehensive disclosure, I flew for a enterprise identified as Air Kauai. So of training course I have a diverse point of view on helicopters, and flying close to islands in them. I am heading to attempt to share with you, expensive reader, why it is that you merely ought to fall whatsoever other getaway programs you might have, get a ticket to Lihue, and hop aboard a tour helicopter. You can go to Orlando, or Branson, or the Catskills upcoming yr.

Here is why you need to have to do this, what helicopter firm you really should think about, how considerably it could price tag, what to choose alongside, and what time of 12 months and time of working day to go. Plus a handful of extras: what to hope on the helicopter tour, what you may possibly see, a security overview, and other odds and finishes to make your lifestyle-altering experience even far more gratifying. Let us start off with getting to Kauai, and a bit of the island’s mystique, beginning, as they say, at the beginning, the origin of Kauai.

Kauai, or the Yard Island, is the furthest (uncovered) northwest island in the Hawaiian chain. I say exposed since the Hawaiian Islands are slowly but surely disappearing. No, this isn’t a motive to shift your excursion up a couple of months, take it easy. This is a bit of Hawaiian trivia that some of your tour mates likely will never know. There are in simple fact 127 islands in the Hawaiian chain, not just the 7 you see on a map today–Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau. The Hawaiian chain stretches throughout the Pacific for 1,two hundred miles, ending in a very little coral atoll called Kure, which is, in simple fact, the quite initial Hawaiian Island, dating back approximately a hundred million many years. As a reference, just one of the Hawaiian Islands is a small area identified as Halfway which is situated, properly, mid way throughout the chain, about 600 miles Northwest of Oahu.

All the islands are volcanic in origin. Their source is a volcanic rift in the ocean flooring named the Hawaiian Emperor vent, which lies deep underneath water seventy miles south and east of Hawaii, the so-termed ‘Big Island’. Over the very last one hundred million decades this volcanic vent has created all 127 islands*. The islands crack the floor, produce into a land mass, neat sufficiently to assist life varieties, and then, owing to wind, drinking water and pure corrosive elements, they slowly but surely erode absent, sinking back again underneath the waves. The islands are also situated right on a tectonic plate with a northwesterly drift, which requires them off towards Japan and Asia more than their lifetimes. Every Hawaiian island truly moves Northwest about 50 percent an inch per yr. Geologists assert that Kure, for instance, will, in a few dozen million many years finish up parked in close proximity to the Kamchatka peninsula.

Kauai itself is about seven million a long time previous. Its certain origin, the volcano that produced the land mass termed Kauai, is currently known as Mount WaiAleAle (Why-Olly-Olly). WaiAleAle sits in the center of the island. Go to Google Earth and sort that in, and see the place it will take you. Additional about this mountain later on, all through your tour.

Speaking of the tour, let us get on with it. Ebook your flight into Lihue, the principal town on Kauai. There are direct flights from the west coast. Most of the helicopter tour operators fly from Lihue airport. Here is a record of those people organizations, and an overview of just about every:

Blue Hawaiian: Superior company, excellent safety report, not the cheapest, but perhaps the best, and this is no time to scrimp. ‘Blue’ flies from Lihue yr round, presenting a detailed, knowledgeable tour of about an hour. Not nearly plenty of time to see it all, but adequate to drop your jaw to the floor. make contact with Blue Hawaiian Helicopters

Safari: Excellent enterprise with a very long history on Kauai. Excellent protection report, and remarkably proficient pilots. Safari gives some benefits other tour corporations do not such as a video of your vacation, out there for a nominal charge. Safari Helicopters Inc.

Island Helicopters: Island is the discount tour, the no frills, hop aboard and see the island helicopter tour. Excellent but not fantastic, and, as I said, this is no time to scrimp. Phone Island Helicopters.

Jack Harter Helicopters: Jack Harter himself was the original helicopter tour dude on Kauai. Jack is the previous gentleman of helicoptering on island, possessing as soon as flown Frank Sinatra and other Hollywood kinds all-around a variety of film spots when ‘ol blue eyes was filming on Kauai numerous moons in the past. Jack Harter Helicopters is the primary. That claimed, the enterprise is superior, not wonderful, really educated, protected, with aggressive costs and a fantastic tour. Harter provides two unique aircraft based on your desire–the AStar for a standard, comfortable, tour, and a small hen flown without having doorways for those people who tote expensive cameras and are, by God, going to use them. Jack Harter Helicopters Inc.

There are other companies to choose from, but individuals previously mentioned are the kinds I suggest. This is the rest of the story: what to count on, what to choose (and not take), pricing, temperature, safety, when to go, and different other issues.

When you arrive for your tour you may be offered a safety briefing for every FAA regulations, just like on the plane. You will master about utilizing various security goods, and be specified a transient overview of your tour. Then you may have to action on a scale. Sorry, people, the airways are authorized to use standard weights, helicopter operators must use real. And certainly, some businesses do cost further above a specified fat. It’s for plane working parameters, as a result for your safety and others’. You can have to shell out of study course, and the price framework is dependent on so quite a few variables I won’t get into particulars. Suffice to say that a tour will value anyplace from $a hundred seventy five.00 apiece up to $300,00, as I say, dependent on reserving arrangements, company, savings etc. Spend it, you can expect to in no way regret it. Following the office environment pay a visit to you are going to be taken to the helicopter where by you may satisfy your pilot and ground crew.

At the flight line you can acquire an comprehensive basic safety briefing from the pilot on exiting the aircraft, use of flotation gadgets, intercom technique, headsets and different other basic safety and pleasant to know items. Dependent on the organization you opt for, you’ll very likely board the plane ‘hot’, that is with the engine in procedure, blades turning. Just pay back attention to your ground crew, and no problems. A single observe of caution–do not go in close proximity to the tail of the helicopter, ever. Usually keep in just the pilot’s line of eyesight. The tail rotor is NOT your friend.