Fun in the Sun
Just back from almost a week of fun and sometimes sun on the Big Island of Hawaii. For those not familiar with Hawaii geography, the Big Island, is the largest in terms of square miles and also the southernmost island in the chain. On the western and sunnier side, is Kailua-Kona, also known for its Kona coffee and macademia nut plantations. My husband and I stayed in Kailua-Kona for 3 nights at the Kona Village Resort. Unfortunately, the resort did not live up to its brochure or the recommondations of friends, either because of new ownership or outdated information. Althougth in fairness to our friends, it had been three years since their stay at the resort. Somehow the idea of donkeys 
(kept on site for who knows what reason) braying all night long did not match our idea of a restful vacation. The chef and one of the dinner hostesses were rude, we had to chase after housekeeping for them to even perform rudimentary cleaning, I’ll spare you some of the more disgusting details, and the place was run-down. Not rustic, but run-down. For the amount of money guests pay there really isn’t any excuse for peeling/cracked wallpaper/walls, holes in most screens, so all but the fattest mosquitos could come in and feed, and a toilet that looked like it was installed in the 1960’s. Again, this was not something made to look rustic/antique etc. This was just they were too cheap to replace it.
Despite our letdown with the Kona accomendations, we still made the best of it and had a good time. The weather was mostly sunny, with a few clouds and rain showers here and there. The sea turtles would come and sun themselves on the beach, and we took a glass bottom boat ride out over the reef and saw plenty of tropical fish.
On Thursday we rented a red mustang convertible which was way fun, and headed for the rainy eastern side of Hilo and Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park. My husband took a few pictures as we drove along the northern part of the Hawaii belt road (you can see just a little of the red in some of the pictures) but he didn’t get a picture of me driving. (He said I had scary convertible hair, LOL). We cruised into Volcano at around 5 pm and checked into a Bed & Breakfast that we would highly recommend, called Lotus Garden Cottages. Our room had something she described as a seven layer bed. Whatever it was it was very comfy, even if I almost needed a stool to get into it! We didn’t see any surface flows of lava, as the Park Service had a lot of the area closed off for safety. We did observe the steam in the distance where the lava met the ocean. It was hard to capture the immensity of the volcanic craters.
They are miles wide and very steep along the sides. As our luck would have it, it rained pretty steadily throughout the day, so we didn’t hike any trails that were longer than about 3/4 of a mile. Usually by the time we reached the viewpoint, we were cold and wet (it was surprisingly brisk even though the elevation wasn’t over 4500 ft above sea level) and the mist/fog prevented a lot of pictures.
I’m not sure if these are viewing ok in all browsers. I’ve been told that people using Internet Explorer sometimes get some screwy formatting. Sorry about that, but it seems to be something with the way the div tags are interpreted by Internet Explorer. All the photos from can be viewed either in the Image Galleries section or over at Flickr.
Now playing: Don Henley - Sunset Grill
Comments