hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're gonna go over planning a
trip to Hawaii on a budget obviously we are not in Hawaii anymore we're back
home in Canada this isn't an ocean just a lake, enjoying the cabin during Coronavirus, so we hope you're all staying safe
right now, too. This past February we spent 16 days traveling to Hawaii and we
did it for under two thousand American dollars per person which we thought
was pretty good so in this video we are going to go over everything and show you
how we did it. For those who don't know us I'm David, I`m Cayleigh, and we run a travel and
adventure blog called Made to Travel we're passionate about activities that get you outside
and off the beaten path before we get started don't forget to subscribe and
hit that Bell button to be notified when we post a new video every week
So first thing you want to chat with you guys about is accommodation and this is
where we were able to save so much money compared to staying in like nice resorts
and hotels we stayed in campgrounds and just camped throughout Hawaii
County campgrounds, State campgrounds, and private campgrounds all are a little
different when it comes to price range but we stayed in a lot of County
campgrounds and we're only spending six to twelve dollars that's for both of us
for a night so you save a ridiculous amount of money there state campgrounds
are a little more expensive and then private campgrounds are a little more
expensive but you won't be spending more than like $30 per night and all these
campgrounds are like on the beach and they've got like washrooms and lots of them have water fountains you can fill your water bottles up at.
They`re all really beautiful and you'll literally save thousands of dollars so
the question that we get asked all the time is how we made camping in who I
work a lot of people don't really like I think alot of people think it`ll be harder than it is, to be honest with you!
Flying down with all your gear, it`s tough. But so we brought our tents
and we brought our back country sleeping bags just for hikes we were doing
but everything else we just bought there so you could you could buy a tent at
Walmart or whatever once you arrive. There's lots of gear there at Walmart
and there's also a couple camping stores in Oahu. Yeah, we just bough an air matress, sheets, an air pump, make sure to buy a blanket
At first we didn`t think we needed a blanket - you definitely need a blanket even if it's hot out it
gets cold at night yeah and yeah an air-pump
buy some nice pillows too, that makes a big difference yeah and honestly all of that stuff
I think cost us maybe cost us like $40 and so you can also rent tents from some of the
campgrounds and stuff, but yeah you can just buy one at the beginning of your trip and use it throughout! So in comparison, if you were to stay
in an air B&B like a private room in an older house we found that that cost
kind of from $90 to close to $200 American dollars a night and then if you want to
stay in a nice resort on the beach in Hawaii it's like five
hundred thousand dollars - that's ridiculous
spending like $12 a night or $800 a night so much fun yeah it's all about
how you want to travel and how long you want to stay there for and your budget.
Next up is transportation and there's three different ways to get around the
different islands there's buses and public transportation
there's taxis and Ubers and then there's renting a car we decided to rent
our own car because it provided yeah and so much flexibility and there's a few
companies in Hawaii that you can rent people's cars from that we got a really
good deal on. Turo is what we used so that's like a really good deal you have
your own vehicle you can come and go whenever you want it's just much more
flexible we found and super popular that's how most people do it especially
when you're camping as well. Yeah camping we pretty much lived out of the back of our jeep so we were able to
have all of our camping here and there go hiking you can do whatever and
it's just a lot of the places on the island are not really accessible by bus
I would say especially if you want to do a lot of hiking so you're gonna be like
asking taxis to drop you off in the middle of nowhere and then come pick you
up three hours later so yeah Uber's big on
Oahu but definitely not as big on Kauai. Another thing is the local bus so if
you're gonna be just kind of staying like in town or in one spot you could
definitely kind of get a taxi there and then take a bus or walk everywhere but
if you're planning on really traveling around the island we would definitely
recommend renting a vehicle and it's not really expensive at the end of the day I
think that we averaged thirty dollars a day per person including like renting
the vehicle, gas, and insurance. When it comes to renting on Turo and also
booking your campsites you want to do it in as much notice as possible yes like
when you plan your trip out that's another big thing when it comes to
budget it's being able to like book all these things well in advance so it's
planned and you don't have to worry about jumping around and spending more
money yeah a lot of the good vehicles are places look up quickly, so if you can try to book them a couple months in advance that`s very helpful. Oh the other thing we
wanted to talk about was inter island flight so for us we flew into
Oahu and then we flew over to Hawaii and back to Oahu and it's very easy to fly in
between islands there's like multiple flights a day and it's usually about
like $150 round trip super cheap so just booked that like a week in advance too
and it's really easy to hop back and forth. One other thing when it comes to
transportation if you plan on renting your own car is gas with the islands
being so small speed limits being like 67 70 kilometers an hour you're not
going to be filling up on gas very much like we're in Kauai for 10 days and we
drove back and forth throughout the island a couple times and I think we
only filled up twice yeah and filling up with vehicles like 40 or 50
dollars US so, we really didn't spend that much on gas at all. No like a couplehundred dollars for the whole trip. Next on
the list is food so food in Hawaii can get very expensive very quickly
Also so good, yeah one of our favorite parts of Hawaii, but so if you're
going to the tourist restaurants and stuff like that you can easily spend
like $50 to $100 american dollars per meal. You can also do it super cheap you could live off like a
cup of noodles and oatmeal and we met a few people doing that our personal
favorite was food trucks oh yeah so you eat you get big portions, you get
really good food there's tons of food trucks all over um and I think we spent
$32 a day ish each on food so yeah reasonable prices big dishes healthy
dishes just an all-around good option I think yeah less time cooking more time
exploring the islands we have two videos on Oahu food trucks and Kauai food
trucks and other cheap eats so if you haven't already checked those out go
over and check them out they're really good and just fantastic food you'll love
seeing the dishes as well because, it gets you so hungry just looking at it. It makes
us want to go back to Hawaii. Yes we`ll link those videos below. So another thing is water if you're camping you can buy
big 5-gallon jugs, once you get a couple of the big jugs
there's fill stations and I think it's 50 cents for a gallon or $2 for five
gallons I believe is the prices, and the
fill stations are everywhere they're outside grocery stores there by
laundromats like sometimes we go do our laundry fill up water all in one stop
and super cheap, And your not wasting a bunch of plastic too, like we always bring our water bottles and try not to be drinking out of little plastic bottles. And you never have to worry about running out
like if you wake up the morning camping, and you`re like oh let's go for a hike you
don't have to worry about stopping and grabbing like five gallons of water cause
you're gonna be crushing it through the whole day. So the last thing on this list
is activities which is a lot of people's favorite part of a trip
second best next to food probably in Hawaii. Could be first, battle for first.
But there's a ton of cheap or free activities in Hawaii so you can go hiking, surfing, you
can you can bring your own snorkel gear or you can rent snorkel gear for like
$5 day yeah um beach hopping is another one so there's a lot of stuff that you
can do for free there's also a lot of really expensive really cool activities
in Hawaii that are worth the money some of them for sure yeah so we found like
for us it was more important we saved so much money on accommodation that we were
able to spend money on some of those things that we wanted to do so we went
diving with sharks we did a helicopter tour over the Na Pali Coast which was we would highly recommend, we did some catamaran tours,
and we were still able to keep our budget under two thousand dollars each
for sixteen days so you kind of have to decide I guess where you want to spend
your money and for us it's like food and activities and and so we made up for
that with the accommodation. With that being said though, accommodation like camping on the
beach it was still pretty good, like I don`t feel like we weer missing out on the resort's like camping on the beach was amazing!
Spend some money on good gear like a good sleeping bag, a good mattress, be as
comfortable as you can and even if you don't like sleeping
outside just toughing it out in Hawaii for like the price is honestly worth it and
yeah they're all so nice. You can also do, like you know camp for three days and
then stay one night in a hotel so you can shower and yeah that kindof of stuff, you can
mix it up that way too and that'll still save you a ton of money. The showers aren't heated
in Hawaii so if you get tired of cold showers on a beach yeah we did hit that point
You think it`s warm so you think like, oh it`ll be fine. So our routine was we
would go usually for hike in the morning and then we'd hit up a beach because
they have free public showers um and even when it's like 25 degrees and sunny out
the cold water isn't that fun to shower in so the showers were the only thing a bit lacking. So, at the end of the day we spent about
$200 each on accommodation, $500 ish on transportation, about $500 each on food,
and about $600 each on activities so about $1800 each. Super reasonable! You
wouldn't think that much when we like when we were first planning our trip to
Hawaii, we were budgeting alot more. Yeah like thousands more but we were actually
able to do it for really cheap and that's how you do it for really cheap, too! It would make a perfect
post-COVID trip, it would actually make a perfect post-COVID trip just in
case you were thinking getting a little antsy being at home with the family too
much yeah are you getting antsy let us know, we`re getting very antsy! We realize we`re very luck to be healthy and where we are, but we`re itching to travel again for sure.
If you like this video make sure to give it a like subscribe and hit that Bell
because we're gonna be posting a new video every week so want to be notified
on that. We have a ton of videos an antenna blog posts on more specific
things we did in Hawaii from hikes, to Food, accommodation, and everything so we'll link a
bunch of those below make sure to check them out thank you so much for watching
and see you next week, see you in the next one