Wanderlust festival can be found at the point where yoga retreat meets music festival. With multiple different yoga classes to choose from at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, and 3pm, it is easy to choose 3 classes each day. Actually, it’s not easy to choose between all the amazing classes offered. With big name yoga teachers like Sean Corne, Eoinn Finn, Janet Stone and Nicki Doane, it is quite difficult to choose which class to take when. It would be easy if it were possible to be in more than one place at a time and practice 10 or so yoga classes a day. Can you imagine?!
Many people have asked me why Wanderlust O’ahu, and that is a good question. Up until working at lululemon, I had never even heard of Wanderlust, but in the lululemon world, this is a pretty popular yoga festival to attend. The first one started in Whistler a few years ago, and has expanded across the US. The idea of going to Wanderlust Whistler had popped into my head as soon as I found out about it, but when I saw two of my coworkers posting videos on each others Facebook walls about Wanderlust O’ahu, I was immediately intrigued. The planning stage basically involved a conversation where we discussed whether or not we wanted to go to Hawaii, whether or not we wanted to go to Wanderlust, and by the time we had drained our cups of tea, we had purchased our tickets for the festival. In the end, only myself and one other girl, Nicole, could go, but we still made the most of our trip to Hawaii, booking a semi-luxurious hotel just off Waikiki beach for our return to Honolulu after the festival.
We arrived to Honolulu late on a Tuesday night, exhausted and starving, and after searching out some food, we fell into rather uncomfortable hostel beds and attempted to sleep with bright blue lights that were curled around a neighbouring palm tree blasting through the windows of our dorm. The following morning, we hit the beach and all was good. Anyone who has spent a winter in Alberta has suffered from the inevitable Vitamin D shortage, and knows just how good the feeling of the sun on the skin can be. When the hot Hawaiian sun became too much for our poor, white skin, we wandered the shops that line Waikiki and enjoyed some of the best sushi I have ever eaten, which completely made up for how expensive it was. Later in the day, we made our way back to the airport to be picked up by the ride share I had arranged to the festival. Wanderlust O’ahu took place on the North Shore of O’ahu at the beautiful Turtle Bay Resort. We left sunny Honolulu and drove across the island, admiring the lush fields and rolling mountains, and watching the massive waves crash into the volcanic rock that makes up the island of O’ahu. Nicole and I pitched our tent, and immediately set off to check into the festival and get some dinner. After wandering Turtle Bay with dropped jaws, we settled on one of the many hotel restaurants where we enjoyed one of the local dishes, poke, which is basically just raw tuna mixed in with an assortment of other ingredients. In this case, the tuna was mixed with avocado, and I was, obviously, in heaven. We set off back to our camp site in an attempt to get a good sleep before beginning the festival.
For us, Wanderlust kicked off at 7am with a class from a local girl on the island, Juri Edwards. It was a decent class, although I didn’t feel the “wow” that I had expected to feel from the quality of yoga at the festival. It wasn’t until much later in the day when I took Sean Corne’s chakra flow class outside until the beating sun with hundreds of other people that I felt wow-ed by the possibility that is teaching yoga. To sum it up, Sean Corne blew my mind. I left her class hot, sweaty, inspired, and ready to take a cold shower back at the camp site. The evening began with free sake tasting, followed by a Wanderlust kick off party put on by lululemon. It was all pretty cool, but after spending the day practicing yoga for 4.5 hours and the rest of the time baking in the sun, we were exhausted and called it a night pretty early on.
Days 2, 3 and 4 were spent in much of the same way. We practiced yoga in between eating, enjoying sunset cocktails on the beach watching the surfers, exploring the local vendors and sampling as much local food as we possibly could, and listening to some of the amazing music that Wanderlust had to offer. We practiced handstands with Jason Nemer and learned to chant with Janet Stone, we had DJ’s bump beats as we flowed through vinyasa after vinyasa, and we had a mega cool dance party with DJ Drez out on the main Wanderlust courtyard. We practiced yoga on a paddle board, and I felt like I was taken back in time to my very first yoga class. Needless to say, doing yoga on paddle board is not easy! By the end of day 4, I was exhausted and I hadn’t even taken full advantage of the music festival part of the festival. As I drifted off to sleep on night 5 in our tent, I looked forward to sleeping in a bed the following night, as my body and mind were both tired from the days prior.
We made our way back to Honolulu at 6am the day after the festival finished, and then made our way back Waikiki to check into our hotel. Upon getting into our hotel room, we dove onto our respective beds and I buried my face into one of the many hotel pillows on my bed, in complete and total bliss. We emptied our bags, washing and hanging the stuff that had been soaked by the sea and the rain while on the North Shore, before making our way to our hotel pool to relax and enjoy the sun. While in Honolulu for 3 days, we spent much of our time relaxing by the pool and decompressing from the intensity that was Wanderlust. We spent one of the days winding back to the North Shore with 2 girls we had met at Wanderlust, and we wandered through a beautiful botanical gardens and swam in what is apparently a healing waterfall. We topped the day off with some of the best Vietnamese food I have ever eaten at the Pig and the Lady in China Town. We ate traditional Hawaiian food, hiked up to Diamond Head to get an amazing view of the island, and took in as much Vitamin D as we could before making our way back to the chilly Alberta mountains.
So, would I go back to Wanderlust O’ahu? In a heart beat. The quality of yoga was amazing, the food (albeit expensive) was delicious, and despite not loving the camping, it was a pretty fun experience. Wanderlust Whistler anyone?! 😉
