Going into this trip we had everything planned out. Thinking that the van would be able to provide us with transportation and a place to sleep, it only provided us with unlivable conditions.
The one night we spent in the van started off fine until we started getting ready to sleep only to find a 2 inch flying around with us inside the van at 8pm. Trying to get the one cockroach, we only saw more climbing around inside. We eventually had to pull all of our belongings out of the vehicle only to find that there were cockroaches on our luggage and sheets. We decided to switch locations to a more public area to seek help and make a call to Laura, the co-host. When we called Laura that night, she told us to simply “clap our hands and make our presence noticed” and it would eventually get the cockroaches “to know that they are not invited.” We tried to do what we were told only to find more cockroaches in the car. On the call Laura did say that we can go and get traps ourselves from Ace hardware.
However, since everything was closed, we had to wait until morning. We pulled all our belongings out of the van again, one by one, keeping the doors closed. We spent hours trying to get rid of the bugs and make the van habitable. Eventually around 3 am we tried to accept that we could not get rid of the cockroaches and forced ourselves to try to sleep in the van. We could not. Around 4 am, I noticed more cockroaches climbing through the vents of the van. The van was infested with cockroaches. Through the course of the night I witnessed 4 baby cockroaches attempting to climb onto my partner’s face.
By daylight we woke up early to quickly go to Ace Hardware for roach traps and Raid, as we were directed by Laura. This had all happened at Anini beach and we started heading out from Princeville to Poipu. We were passing through Kapa’a when we noticed that the AC had stopped blowing cold.
We sent a text to Laura reporting the issue and she told us she would get back to us. Two minutes later I noticed plumes of steam coming out from under the hood. We pulled over to the side of the one-lane highway and saw that the engine was overheating. We spent 15 minutes, waiting on the side of that dangerous one-lane highway to wait until the van was somewhat driveable. Once it had cooled down, we moved into the nearest parking lot. We called Mario (the host) and asked for a refund because this was unacceptable. The car is not drivable and not livable. He told us to send our location to Laura and she would come pick us up. As we waited for her to arrive we desperately attempted to find a place to sleep. We called a few hotels and managed to find only one hotel in Hanalei that would provide us with one night to stay for $300. Laura then picked us up and told us that she would give us a ride to Hanalei.
On the car ride to a bus stop to Kilauea Laura was about to change her word and said that she had other errands to run so she was going to drop us back off in Kapa’a. My partner disagreed and reminded Laura that she already agreed to dropping us off at a closer bus stop and it was unacceptable to leave us stranded. Laura then passively-agressively agreed to take us to a closer bus stop. We took the bus to Hanalei and after the bus dropped us off we were tired and forced to tread with our luggage to the Hanalei Inn for about a mile. When we got to the hotel, it was 4pm and we started looking for our next move for the following day. We were running out of options, we spent 3 hours calling every hotel on the island and they all said they either had no vacancy or would not rent to us because we were under 21. After contacting every hotel, we decided to look for another Airbnb. We contacted every Airbnb on the island and none of them could take us. We ended up finding a hotel for $500 a night, spending another $2,000.
We were told we rented a one of a kind “rare gem” that would provide us with all-in-one: a place to sleep and a vehicle. Instead, we were forced to sleep in unbearable cockroach-infested conditions. We are requesting the full refund of $388 (which, in reality, cannot even begin to cover the stress, sleeplessness, hopelessness, emotional damage, trauma and money spent as a result of this host’s dishonesty and failure to provide acceptable accommodations).