Aloha!

We started to plan out a vacation for this year last week and after my sister Michelle graciously offered to come stay at our place and watch our kitties and enjoy some beach time, we're considering a trip to Hawaii. 

We're finding it quite overwhelming picking one particular island out of all the ones available.  Since we would be there for just a week, we feel it's best to stay on one island.  There are a few main things we'd like to do, like a 'Lost' tour to some areas from the TV show, helicopter tour of the area, etc.  Because some of the key activities are on Oahu, we're thinking we'd need to stay on that island, however we do not want to stay in the busy area of Waikiki Beach/Honolulu. 

So right now we're having a hard time trying to strike a balance of a nice quieter place to stay, while still trying to be close to places to venture out to.  We found some beautiful inexpensive condos on Makaha, in West Oahu on a beautiful beach that has great snorkeling and sea turtles, spinner dolphins and monk seals. 

However, it's 45 mins from Waikiki Beach and the Lost Tour and helicopter tours mostly go out of there and from what we've read/heard, you do not want to drive in that area.  And if the tours leave at say 8:30 AM from the busy area, there's no easy way to get into town to do that. 

If we stayed on the West Coast of Oahu we're thinking maybe we could plan out our own Lost tour of a few sites and rent a car and try and do it all on our own.  If we had to go into town once to do a helicopter tour or just to experience the busy area for a day we could possibly.

But we're in the very preliminary stages and the wifey always takes the lead on our trips and we've posted a bunch of questions on the Trip Advisor forums and will see what we come up with.

We've asked my sister Michelle and friend Jen S for some advice and got some good info back to consider, but we're also looking for any additional tips anyone out there might have!  Aloha!