Monday, 05/16/11. Flight and arrival.
The flights were on time and pretty unspectacular - not that I'm complaining about that! We arrived in Kona at around noon. The weather was a little cloudy but mid eighties (of course) and generally gorgeous. Of course, coming from the lousy Oregon spring it didn't take a lot to make us happy. The airport is an open air airport, which I guess makes sense given the typical weather here. That got us into the vacation mood right away.
We then picked up our rental car - a Lincoln Mercury of all cars! - and drove to the resort, Hilton Waikoloa Village. Beautiful, of course.
When we checked in we got a free upgrade to a room with ocean view, which is always very much appreciated! They probably gave us the upgrade as there had been a lot of complaints in the other part of the resort due to a meditation group - another word for being obnoxiously loud in the middle of the night and be high all the time it seems - so maybe that was the lesser of two evils for them. Fine with us!
We can even see the sunset from our balcony, and also the sunrise if we lean over a little. Very romantic.
After our arrival, we had a cup of Kona coffee and a blueberry scone/tuna sandwich with some fresh fruit, and then explored the resort.
It does feel little like Disney World: Everything is fully designed, every little thing serves a purpose. They even have a tram and some boats that move from one side of the resort to the other. Amazing! There are also dolphins that live in part of the lagoon here. They train them to keep them occupied and let the visitors play with them (got to pay for that, though, of course - for only $3,300 you can work 7 hours/day for 5 consecutive days as a dolphin trainer!). 
And guess what, there are even cats roaming the resort. They feed them and keep them healthy. We also learned that the resident sea turtles that live in the lagoon get an examination every year to make sure they, too, are staying healthy!
In the early afternoon, we took our snorkel gear and headed to the resort's lagoon to try it out. We saw a lot of fish, some blue, some yellow, some plain, some stripy. And also one yellow-white eel - scary! And two sea turtles who all of a sudden appeared right next to us in the murky water. What a shock! They probably are used to the tourists already, but I got scared there.
In the evening we had dinner in our room. I had a poke, marinated raw ahi fish with avocado and salad - SO good. I don't recall ever having eaten fish that tasted so, so good. Jan went for a "safer" dinner: eggs, sausage and potatoes. We finished it off with a shared piece of mango cheesecake. Yummy too.
After watching the sun set we went to bed early. After all, we got up early and Hawaii is three hours behind Oregon. So seven thirty here is really, really late for us!
Tuesday, 05/17/11. Drive to Hilo.
As expected I got up early, 3:45am. Which for Oregon time is pretty good, I haven't slept that long in a while. Hehe. Getting up early gave me a chance to sit on the balcony, enjoying the mild breeze and the sound of crickets and watching one of the cats hunt for breakfast.
We had a very big breakfast at the resort this morning. After all it's included in the price! We then headed to the rental car and started driving towards Hilo following highway 19 to Waimea and then highway 200 (the saddle road) which runs between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Quite a scenic drive. It started out with regular vegetation (mostly grass and bush), turned into barren lava land and then very abruptly into the most amazing lush forest. The transitions are really impressive, very sudden. The east side of the island is a lot greener - because a lot rainier - than the west side.
After arrival in Hilo, we had a quick break, got something to drink and a coconut "goody good" - shaved ice cream - before we continued our drive back, this time following highway 11 to the north. We stopped at Rainbow Falls, which not only has a nice water fall but also some very impressive old Banyan trees.
We then made our way back to Waimea along the coast, stopping at a few places.
One of them was the Laupahoehoe Harbor,
another the Onomea trails (close to the botanical garden).
We also stopped at Donna's cookies, a small business right off highway 11, and got some very tasty shortbread and macadamia cookies.
Back in Waimea we headed into a Starbucks for some coffee and went shopping for some soft drinks and baguette, and also some macadamia nuts and jam to bring back home. We then followed highways 11 and 19 back to the resort where we checked out the plazas and bought some kona coffee and chocolate (all in one store, what a great business idea!). After a quick refreshment in the lagoon we had dinner at the lagoon grill. Jan had a tuna burger with fries and I had some fresh fruit, banana bread and some of the fries. Tasty, but nothing compared to last night's ahi!
We decided to go on a helicopter ride after all, let's hope we can get that organized tomorrow.
Wednesday, 05/18/11. Snorkeling at Hapuna Beach.
I slept in until five today! That's eight in Oregon!
After Breakfast we headed to Hapuna Beach to go snorkeling. The beach is beautiful, with very white sand and even some trees to provide shade. We put the gear on and went for the fun. There were not as many fish around as we had hoped for, so we decided to get closer to the rocks on the northern side of the bay. That was rewarded, we did see some more fish there but nothing that we could not see in our lagoon.
Then: the big scare. The water proof plastic container that I had around my neck, which contained the car keys, our hotel key and Jan's credit card, had popped open and was empty. We had lost everything some time during the last 30 minutes or so and somewhere in the vastness of the bay... Sounds bad? It was.
So... We snorkeled around, not looking at fish but trying to find the missing pieces (and just to spite us, there were many more fish around NOW that we were ignoring them!). No luck.
Jan went for another round while I headed outside to see if maybe they had been washed ashore. I figured I might as well ask the lifeguard there and guess what - somebody had indeed found some things and brought them to the hotel lobby. How lucky we were! I ran up to the lobby and ask for the items, but as I had zero ID on me they were a bit hesitant to hand them over. Understandably so! Luckily (again!) the credit card had Jan's picture on the back, so I ran back outside to get him (it was a long, long walk). They were kind enough to return everything to us. And I even ran into the woman who had found and returned the items. Good to know that there are good people out there!
After that excitement, we chilled a little on the beach before going for another round of snorkeling. This time we left the keys and cards at the beach. You live you learn. We headed more toward the middle of the beach (there were a few rocks there as well), and we even saw two sea turtles. They were pretty curious and kept coming closer toward me and moving around me. Very cute.
At around noon we went back to the hotel, had a shower to warm up, a coffee on the go and walked to the king's plaza to see what's there (Macy's and other stores). Jan bought some T-shirts there.
Right next to the plaza is a path that leads to some petroglyphs. Those are glyphs carved into the lava fields there, which to large parts have not been deciphered yet.
It was a pretty rough road in the middle of a lava fields with glyphs to both sides. We also saw some caves that had served as shelter.
The walk to the plaza and back to the hotel was not at all that long, but we did catch a lot of sun there. Got to be careful, we are slightly red now (we managed to avoid that the first days we were here). No full sunburn yet, let's keep it that way!
We had an early dinner at the boat landing (Jan had a burger and I some sushi plus a mango smoothy on the house thanks to the aloha pass that was included in our vacation package) and then went to one of the pools to read and relax.
In the evening we watched Gnomes and Juliette, a very cute animated movie. Highly recommendable.
Thursday, 05/19/11. Helicopter ride over a volcano.
We got up early, had breakfast and headed toward Hilo (along highways 19 and 11) to go on a helicopter ride with Safari Tours. I was initially a little bit worried - me and heights, we are not close friends! But the ride was actually a lot of fun. Especially lifting up vertically was cool.
The pictures are a little bit low quality - they were taken with the cell phone through the glass windows of the helicopter.
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| Our pilot Jim |
We headed toward Pu'u O'o, which had been very active a few weeks ago but had calmed down considerably. Still, we saw some lava bubbling inside the crater. Pretty cool, something we'll remember for a long time for sure!
There was no lava flowing into the ocean though, as the lava tubes had clogged up.
We also flew over a house with a red roof that serves as a bed and breakfast every once in a while and is located right between two big lava flows. In 1985 (I think) an eruption caused lava to flow very close to the house, so by now it is pretty much completely isolated from everywhere. And the owner still lives there!
We then drove toward the Volcanoes National Park, stopped briefly at the lava rock for lunch (food was pretty meh), and the headed into the park. As we still had a long drive back we decided to drive around the crater instead of walk (America is great :)). Roughly half of that road was closed as the volcano, Kilauea, was spewing out sulfurous gases. We still got a pretty good look at the volcano. We also briefly stopped at the Jaggar museum.
After that it was just a very, very long drive back to the resort, this time following highway 11 around the south end of the island. Long stretches are very curvy and the speed limit is 35 mph, so it took quite a while. And for some reason we were both pretty tired. We did stop briefly at a black sand beach (been there, done that, got the picture)
and arrived back at the hotel shortly before 5pm. A long day indeed!
This time we went for dinner at the Malolo Lounge, where we entered right as the managers made their round to chit-chat with the guests. A little strange. We did get some free appetizers and could have had free Mai Tai if we wanted to (the servers could not believe that we really were not interested!). Jan went for the nachos (really bad, I bet it was spray cheese) and I got the limu poke, which was good but not as breathtakingly good as on the first night.
Friday, 05/20/11. A calm day at the resort.
After all that driving yesterday we decided to take it easy today (after all, we're on vacation, right?) and just hang out at the lagoon, writing these updates and some post cards. We did go for some early morning snorkeling in the lagoon before breakfast, though, which was a lot of fun. The water was still pretty cool for the most part (although we did find some pockets of warmer water, which always lead to very limited sight as cold and hot water mixed). Saw a sea turtle right next to me (he/she wasn't moving much, guess it was still too early) and a lot of fish of various colors and sizes. Definitely something we will do again tomorrow morning.
After breakfast we headed to the lagoon, had some coffee (that was the most exercise we got all morning long besides the snorkeling!) and watched the fish being fed.
In the evening we watched Tangled - also a very cute and enjoyable movie.
Saturday, 05/21/11. Mauna Kea.
We snorkeled again before breakfast and spent the morning near the lagoon
and playing stone age in the hotel room. Jan won. Again. Sigh. Seems there is really no way how I can beat him with 5 folks against his 10 folks. I guess I need to invest in more people.
At 3:45pm we met with Greg, our tour guide, at the Starbuck's in Queen's Marketplace and drove up to Mauna Kea. It took about an hour to the visitor center where we had an early dinner - teriyaki chicken and brownie - and some time to look at the sun through two telescopes - it currently shows a single sunspot - and the gift shop.
Then it was up the mountain along a dirt road and towards our first stop, an area with a good overview of all thirteen telescopes there. Thirteen is by the way the maximum number of telescopes that are allowed on that hill. So if a new one was to be built, an old one would have to be torn down first. The famous ones of course are the two Kecks and also the "Pluto killer".
From there it was just a short drive up to almost 14,000 feet elevation where we watched the sunset. Beautiful, the colors lingered for a long time. The clouds looked like soft patches of snow. So all in all, it didn't even feel that high as the clouds mimicked the ground quite nicely.
After sunset we headed back to the visitor center and out a small dirt road that lead to the viewing spot. The two vans provided some nice wind shield. Much appreciated, it was rather chilly. We looked at an open and a globular cluster through the 11 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, and also at the whirlpool and sombrero galaxies. And of course at Saturn with its rings and moon Titan. Very beautiful. Wthout the telescope, we could see parts of the Milky Way, the zodiacal lights, the full Scorpio and the Southern Cross. The sky was pitch black and full of stars. Very impressive. After a hot chocolate with cookie and one last look at Saturn we headed back to the resort. Pricey, but definitely unforgettable!
We got to bed by eleven, very, very tired but very, very happy.
Sunday, 05/22/11. Last day.
We slept in a little after the late night yesterday, skipped the morning snorkeling and went straight to breakfast. We then got into the rental and drove toward Kailua Kona. I stopped at a Target (of all places!) and bought a ukulele! It'll probably sound very bad, but hey, just wanted to have one. We drove through the beach part of Kona - very touristy indeed. I'm glad we booked our vacation here and not there.
Part of the afternoon was spent in our room playing stone age and guess what - I beat Jan!
We had dinner in the room watching It's kind of a funny story. Very nice movie, we enjoyed it a lot. And the dinner was great too. I again had the Big Island Poke. Yummy. So good. Jan had some Mahi Mahi, also great, and the mango cheesecake. After dinner we walked along the beach watching the sun set, had a mango smoothie, and walked back along the scenic route. Very romantic. I'll miss this place. A great vacation.
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