This is the story of how one of our most recent owners decided to buy, we hope you enjoy and feel free to send your stories to info@kenanikai.com so we can perhaps share yours as well!
Owners: Dr. Christopher Zaleski & Whitney Zaleski
I (Whitney) had known about Molokai and the timeshares at Ke Nani Kai for my entire life because my mother and father purchased a timeshare on one of their first trips to Hawaii before I was even born. Though I had never been myself, I grew up seeing the beautiful pictures and hearing the wonderful stories from the island. That all changed when my dad decided to bring me down as my high school graduation present (how lucky I was!).
On that trip I absolutely fell in love with the island. It’s so rare to have such extremes on such a small island, but it makes for so many different things to see and opportunities to do things! Our big excursion this first trip was hiking down to Kalaupapa which was an amazing experience!
I would often talk about that trip and say how I wanted to go back and after I married Chris I knew I wanted to take him there as well. Because Molokai is not what most people think of when they think “Hawaiian Vacation” (for which I’m thankful for) I wanted to make sure Chris got to visit before we decided if we wanted to buy ourselves. Needless to say, it didn’t take long before he was sold on the idea as well and we became owners within a few months of that first visit!
Aside from loving the island, the rooms, amenities, and staff at Ke Nani Kai made it a place that feels like a home away from home. Having access to a full kitchen, laundry, and grill makes it so easy to cook and experience all the natural things the island has to offer. We purchased meat, bread, vegetables, and fruit all from local growers and the taste was out of this world. We also got to partake in some local food such as musubi, poke, and fish tacos which were all a highlight.
The big excursion on this trip was definitely the drive to and the cultural hike in the Halawa Valley on the East end of the island. It’s amazing to me how different the two ends of the island are and the Mo’oula Falls was certainly worth the effort.
Ultimately we decided to purchase a 2 bedroom condo (which was WAY more affordable than we thought!) that way we could travel with friends and have room if we eventually have kids someday. One of the other reasons we decided to buy was the ability to easily trade a week with locations all over the world! While we haven’t had the pleasure of doing this yet, this feature completely saved our honeymoon after Hurricane Michael came through and flooded our first plans. My father very kindly traded one of his weeks for us to use, Sue worked her magic, and we ended up having a great time in the desert (away from the chance of another hurricane).
As new owners, we are especially excited about the memories Ke Nani Kai has already given us, and we look forward to many more to come as we can now travel with our family all to one place! For other folks, it’s a great opportunity to get away and make great memories with your family (people of all ages) and we hope to maybe see you down on Molokai sometime soon! Mahalo!
