Hawaii! Part 3

Sept. 10: Kona

After our last yummy breakfast in our cabin, we packed up and got ready for our drive to the Kona coast on the other side of the island. We first got waylaid searching for Garret and Sandy to check out. They knew we'd be checking out that morning (there are only a few cabins on their property) but they weren't in the office and they didn't answer the doorbell to their house, and finally James called them and found out they weren't there and just leave the key in the office. Fine, but annoying because we wasted time.

Then we went next door to do a load of laundry. There's a coin laundromat and it seemed like the best opportunity we'd get on the trip, and we didn't have enough clothes to go the whole two weeks without doing laundry at least once. So we washed a load. And the clothes were SOAKING WET when the cycle finished. Dripping wet. Argh. So we had to wring out all of our clothes, piece by piece, which was cold on our hands and annoying and probably not that good for the clothes. Then we dried the clothes in two driers to try to speed things up. Of course, they took forever to dry. We kept having to load quarters into the machines. I don't remember how expensive it was to do laundry that day, or how much time it took, but it was a big waste on both counts.

Finally we bought sandwiches at the cafe and took off. We ate on the road. Google Maps says it's a two hour drive but it felt like a lot longer than that. Maybe just because we got such a late start. It was interesting that once we got to the other side of Kilauea, the island turned very desert-y. The east side of the island is lush and green, but the west side is very dry. And we saw so many random piles of black volcanic rubble! It was so weird to see grassy fields with streaks of black lava rock running through them.

We wanted to go see the famous green sand beach, but Sandy told us we'd have to park our car and hike in for an hour, then hike out for an hour, and the parking lot is unguarded and there's a high rate of break ins there. Since we'd have the Mac and James' work laptop in the trunk, we decided not to risk it. It was a bummer, but with the late start we got, we couldn't have done it anyway.

We did make one stop along the way - to the Place of Refuge, Pu'Uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. We walked around and snapped some pictures.

We finally arrived at our hotel -the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort - and checked in. It was quite a different experience from checking into Volcano Country Cottages - we had to pay for parking, for one, and they just handed us our keys and gave us a generic welcome. We swam in their fancy pool for a while, which was nice. The pool was fairly large, and part of it was in the courtyard area, surrounded by the hotel and therefore shady, and part of it was out in the open, by the ocean. The water was much warmer on that side. There was a little water slide that connects the two areas, and we slid down it, then discovered that there's a full-sized slide on the sunny side of the pool. So we went over there and went down the slide, and then waded through the kiddie area of the pool, where they had a chunky sort of sand in the bottom. I've never seen that in a pool before! The kids were having a ball with it.

Our 1001 Place to See Before You Die - US and Canada Edition (which we used on our honeymoon) said the best place to go to a luau was at the Kona Village Resort, so I made reservations about a week before we left for Hawaii. It wasn't until we got to the Kona coast that I thought to check how far away the luau was from our hotel. I mean, it's called the Kona resort and we were staying in Kona, so it couldn't be that far, right? Um. They were an hour apart. Awesome. It's just a good thing I checked before we went into the pool, because then we knew to keep it short, otherwise we could have been late for the luau. And it's $100 a pop, so we didn't want to miss a minute of it. So we got dressed and drove up and got there in time to see everything.

The first thing we did was stand in line for a while, then they let us in to the tables. As we waited, a couple of men came around and gave the women leis. I was super impressed - orchids! - but then in the grocery store I saw a necklace lei - twice the length of the one I got at the luau? - selling for about $7. It's hard to believe that all those orchids could be so cheap!

Anyway, I was still super excited to get a lei! We sat down at our table, and we got good seats, right by the stage. A trio of singers entertained us with Hawaiian music while waiters went around and got everyone their drinks.

We munched on taro chips while we waited, which were very yummy. And purple.

After a while, they announced it was time for the ceremony to open the cooking pit where the pig had been roasting whole all day long. We all trooped over to another part of the grounds and gathered around the pit. They opened the pit and took out the meat, while the woman described what was happening.

The pork was roasting in a whole in the ground. If I remember correctly, the meat was wrapped in banana leaves and then some sort of cloth, like burlap, then covered with more hot stones, then the whole thing was buried under a lot of dirt. When we arrived, the dirt had already been removed, revealing the burlap and rocks. The men removed the hot rocks with their bare hands.

Then some dude standing in the back of the audience passed out and at first all we heard was his wife frantically saying his name and then we all realized what happened, there was this dude on the ground, out cold, and his wife was knealing over him all teary-voiced and trying to get him to wake up, and it was really scary for a moment until he came to and it became apparent that he was just dehydrated. He was young, in his 30s, and so they just gave him some water and he went back to his table, but I think if it had been my dad (he's passed out like that before), they would have called an ambulence. I realized how scary it would be to see my poppa pass out (he's done it several times, each time landing in the hospital, but I've never been there for it.)

Before they unleashed us on the buffet, this guy came out to teach us how to open a coconut the traditional way:

He was really funny and charming. He asked if anyone had any questions after his demonstration, and someone asked something like how long it took him to get that tattoo on his shoulder. He told them, then asked if there were any other questions, trying to redirect things back to coconuts... and some idiot asked "Were you drunk when you got it done?" James and I kind of gasped but the guy handled it well, and just said, no, it was a spiritual thing. But geez. A lot of Hawaiian men have traditional black ink tattoos and it's kind of obvious that they're a point of cultural pride. And this guy's tattoo is an elaborate, beautiful design, not some stupid cartoon character.

Anyway. Finally they let us go back to the food. They gave us traditional-looking wooden bowl/plate things. There were four or five tables loaded with food and I wanted to try a little bit of (nearly) everything!

So... I did. There's salad, fresh fruit, raw salmon and tuna slices (sashimi?), a raw salmon salad that I didn't like, a piece of BBQ beef that I was too stuffed to try, mac-and-potato salad (a wonderful Hawaiian staple of the plate lunch), purple sweet potato, bread fruit, turkey and pork that were cooked in the pit. No, I didn't eat it all. And yes, I felt bad about that. My eyes were definitely bigger than my belly, and I tried to only take a couple bite's worth of everything - but there was so much I wanted to try!

Except for the poi. Once I saw it in the serving dish, I discovered I didn't really have any interest in tryhaving it on my plate. We heard about poi since coming to Hawaii - it's taro that's been pounded and mixed with water until it's a pasty purple-ish grey-ish soupy consistency. Taro is a staple on Hawaii, and poi is one of the main ways they eat it. James got some and I tried a bite (it's the greyish stuff under his meat) - it's very bland and the texture is just wrong. It's like trying to eat wallpaper paste.

Then the show began! This is how it opened:

The show told a sort of story, taking us on a journey through the Polynesian islands with song and dance. There were a lot of neat performances, and it was fun and entertaining.

They did traditional dances from a lot of different islands of the Pacific. I forget what all of them were, except for the Maori men:

(Okay, I thought they were Samoan, but a looooong and fruitless Google search revealed that they were not Samoan, they were Maori.) They did the traditional bug-eyes, tongues-out face that Maori men did to scare the enemy in battle, but I didn't manage to get a photo.

But here's a photo of the Maori warrior face:

That took me a long time to find since I was googling for the wrong nationality, so. Appreciate.

The show ended with our coconut guy being a fire eater. He touched his burning torch to his tongue! Twice! He did that on the little stage close to the audience, then went back to the main stage (which was separated from the audience by a little pond). Then he did some awesome twirling with the burning torches, but I couldn't catch that with my camera because he was so far away.

It was a great night! A bit overpriced, probably, and touristy, definitely, but a good experience. We couldn't go to Hawaii for the first time and not go to a luau. I'm glad we went to once that was so high quality! And the food was really good, and there was sure a lot of it. We both enjoyed the show, it was fun and interesting to see the different dances and hear the different sorts of music, and it had a good pace to it so it never got boring. And it didn't drag on forever, which was good. Because you can only take so much super touristy staged fake-authentic cultural stuff.

(They present the luau as being a "traditional" luau, but there's nothing actually traditional about it. The word luau isn't even traditional. Hah! It's all for the tourists.)

Hawaii! Part 2

The next leg of our Hawaiian vacation was on the Big Island. Our time on the Big Island was split into two parts: three nights in Volcano and two nights in Kona.

Sept 7 - Sept 9: Volcano Village on The Big Island

Our flight from Honolulu to Hilo was fairly early on Sept 7, and it was a short flight, so we basically had a full day on the Big Island. The view as we left Honolulu was spectacular!

Once we landed on the Big Island, we picked up our rental car and headed into Hilo proper. Our first destination was Liliuokalani Gardens, a pretty little Asian-themed park. We wandered through and took pictures before going to downtown Hilo, which is a line of weathered shops lining one road - it looked very Wild West. We bought some papaya and a pineapple at the farmer's market - the papaya were 3 for $1!

Then went to the Lyman House and Mission Museum and took a tour. The Lymans were a family of missionaries who came to the island in the 1800s. Then we had lunch at Cafe 100, because the tour book said a trip to Hilo isn't complete without a loco moco at Cafe 100. We split a Kilauea Loco, which has chili instead of a hamburger patty, and it had a few sausage links and a piece of fried Spam. That may be the first time I've ever tasted Spam - it wasn't bad!

After lunch, we made a couple quick stops at famous waterfalls outside of Hilo. There was no hiking involved - the waterfalls were just roadside lookouts. But they were beautiful.

We drove down to Volcano Village to check into our bed and breakfast. It was a long drive from Hilo to Volcano - about an hour. On Oahu, that much driving would have put us clear on the other side of the island, but on Hawaii, we didn't even go a quarter of the way around. It's a huge island!

When we pulled into the bed and breakfast's driveway, the owner, Garret, came out to greet us. He was a TALKER - he called it the aloha spirit - he welcomed us warmly and seemed happy to take all the time in the world to get to know us and show us around. We talked with him for about an hour, and he gave us a tour of the grounds and showed us our house. We had a whole house to ourselves, the Artist's House. It was awesome, so cozy and quaint and comfortable. The grounds were gorgeous too, Garret is a zealous gardener and his hard work on his gardens shows.

One thing that surprised us about Volcano was that it was chilly! Garret told us we were about a mile in elevation, and what a difference it made from sea level. So as soon as Garret released us, drove straight into Volcanoes National Park to go to the visitor's center before it closed - we had forgotten to pack James a sweatshirt and we needed to get him something so he wouldn't freeze the whole time we were there. Luckily our B&B is only 15 minutes from the park, because we got there with just a few minutes to spare before the gift shop closed. We ended up getting matching pullover windbreakers even though I had my zip-up hoodie, because a hoodie wouldn't protect me from the wind.

Now that we were more or less properly dressed, we went to see the steam vents on the edge of Kilauea's crater. The ground was steaming all along this stretch of cliff overlooking the enormous crater - it was an amazing view. Then we drove over to a museum on the rim of the crater, where we could get a good view of the column of steam rising from the spot in the crater where magma was boiling right at the surface. The magma was at the bottom of deep hole in a smaller crater within the massive Kilauea crater, which meant that the angle was wrong for us to be able to see any of the actual lava, but it was cool to see the huge column of steam. I think the only way to see the lava at the bottom of that deep hole is to fly over it.

We went back to Volcano Village for dinner at the Thai restaurant next door to our B&B, and had a delicious meal. After dark, we drove back into the national park (it's open 24 hours a day) to go back to the museum lookout area to see the volcano at night. The way Garret told it, the whole column of steam would be bright red. It was less spectacular than that, but still awesome. The steam was red only very close to the vent opening, but it was incredible to see. And the stars out there were amazing - we could see the Milky Way clearly, and the sky was just packed with stars.

The next morning, I woke up super early as usual, since I was having a hard time adjusting to Hawaii time. But for the first time on our trip, I was able to get up and go to another room so James could keep sleeping. I made myself a mug of hot chocolate and curled up on the couch in the terry robe that I found in the closet, and read for a long while before I work up James. We had breakfast, which Garret and his wife Sandy had left for us - fresh pineapple, papaya and little tropical bananas, a small loaf of a homemade quick bread with macadama nuts, I fried up a couple of eggs, and milk and OJ. It was all delicous! We got sandwiches from the deli nearby and stowed them in a cooler that G&S provided, and grabbed the flashlights and extra batteries that they also had available for us, and went into the park for a day of adventuring.

Our first stop was the Thurston Lava Tube, a cave-like tunnel where the lava poured through and left this almost perfectly round tube through solid rock. It's apparently a huge attraction and Garret had us worried that it would be overrun with tourists (if there's a tourist bus parked in the parking lot, he told us, just keep driving). We were excited when we got there and there were only a few cars. We didn't see anyone else on our walk into the tube, but on the way out we saw more and more people. Because we had the flashlights, we were able to go beyond the main lighted part of the tube, and into the unlit portion, all the way to the very back, where we turned off our lights and were in complete darkness. It was an awesome experience.

Next, we hiked across the Kilauea Iki crater, which is a smaller crater next to the massive main crater. We hiked around the rim of the crater a bit, then down a lot of switchbacks to the bottom. It was surreal walking across the interior of the crater, it was like walking on Mars. Then we had to climb back out of the crater and hike around the rim for a while before we made it back to our car. It was a longer hike than we expected, it probably took about three hours, and we were starving and exhausted by the end of it. For a good portion of the hike, we were totally exposed to the intense sunshine as we crossed the crater, and even though the gusty wind kept us cool, I think all that bright sunshine wore us out. We drove back to our cabin for a late lunch, a nap, and some quiet time.

After our relaxing little break in adventuring, we drove over to Volcanoes Winery for some tasting. It's the southern-most winery in the US, and their wines are flavored with tasty tropical fruits like papaya.

Next, we drove down the chain of craters road to the shore. The drive took us from about a mile in elevation to sea level, and our goal was to try to see the lava that was pouring down into the ocean down past the end of the road. There were lots of things to stop and see along the way, craters and lava fields. We got out a bunch of times to take pictures and explore, so it took a long time to work our way down to the end of the road. We parked and walked down the road until it was obliterated by an enormous lava flow that had completely wiped out the road (and a village a few miles away) several years ago.

We scrabbled over the lava to a point where we'd get a view of the fresh lava pouring into the ocean, and were disappointed to discover that the fresh lava was still a few miles away - too far to see anything but the plume of steam. The sun sets quickly in Hawaii, so we hustled back to our car when it got dark. We had a long drive back to our cabin, where we had leftover Thai food for dinner and then promptly fell asleep.

The next day, we felt like we'd seen enough of the national park, so we drove west to the Puna coast, which is known for being a hippy area. We stopped at the Hilo Coffee Mill along the way, a coffee shop where the grow and roast their own beans. We sampled their coffees and then sat down with mugs of their pineapple coffee (it was surprisingly tasty!) and the cat that lives there. The drive was beautiful, and we loved getting the chance to see more of the island. We drove down some gorgeous tree tunnels.

We took a driving tour of Puna, stopping off at the major sights: some awesome tide pools that were big enough to swim in, where we had lunch, a hot water spring in a beautiful park, a black sand nude beach (the only nudists there were a couple of old hippy men).

The black sand was incredible. We had to hike down a bit to the nudist beach, and just sat at one end and marvelled at the jet black sand.

Actually we stopped at several beaches along the way. Then we reached the end of the road from the other side (the other side of the lava flow that we'd visited the night before), and there was a little touristy outpost there where we got Hawaiian flavored ice cream and slices of white pineapple - both were incredibly delicious. We walked out to a new black sand beach to try to see the lava flow into the ocean from that side, but again we were way too far away. We did get to see the steam plume grow into a huge mushroom cloud, though!

On our way home, we stopped at the Lava Tree State Park to see some lava trees. These stone pillars were created when lava swept through the area, and collected around living trees. The trees burned up inside, but the lava turned to stone around them, and when the rest of the lava flow drained away, these were left behind.

After that, we went to dinner at a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant before heading back to Volcano for our last night in our favorite little bed and breakfast. The next day, we'd be heading to the Kona coast.

Hawaii! Part 1

James and I took a Hawaiian vacation-slash-tropical honeymoon from Sept 4 through Sept 17. I say "slash-tropical honeymoon" because it wasn't our official honeymoon - we had that following our wedding last year. And while our official honeymoon was lovely, and we got to see the whole country, it wasn't tropical (which we originally wanted for our honeymoon), it also involved days of 8 to 10 hours of driving, and not a whole lot of relaxing. So we thought of the Hawaiian trip as Honeymoon 2.0, in which we would do a lot of relaxing and partake in plenty of romantic tropical togetherness.

And it was awesome.

Time seemed to slow down in Hawaii, and we really got to relax and enjoy ourselves. Two weeks seems to be the perfect length of time for a vacation. We were really able to unwind without the stress of going back to work staring us in the face at the end of the first week. In fact, by the end of the first week, it seemed liked we'd been there for ages, and it felt like we had ages left before we had to fly home. It was delicious.

For the first half of the trip, we were waking up anywhere between 4:30 - 6:00 every day due to the jet lag. All those early starts to the day really helped us pack the most into our trip possible. We had so many amazing adventures!

Sept 4 - Sept 6: Oahu

We arrived in Honolulu at 5pm on Sept 4, after something like 20 hours of travel, and on about 4 hours of sleep. The first main event was an unhappy one: when we got to the car rental place, James couldn't find his driver's license! There was some freaking out. We went back to the terminal but couldn't find anyone from our airline to help us (they'd all shut down for the day). More freaking out. Then, we went back to the car rental place, defeated and upset, only to find out that the bus driver had found the ID on the floor of his bus! So everything was fine! Huzzah!

Our first full day in Oahu was gorgeous and so exciting - we were so thrilled to be there. We got up super early and walked from our hotel to Waikiki beach, strolled along the sand, and wandered all through Waikiki. Of course we got our photo taken with the famous Duke Kahanamoku statue.

In the afternoon, we drove over to Kailua to go to the beautiful beach there. The drive over was gorgeous, too, through these jaw-droppingly beautiful rugged mountains. The beach was amazing - the water was crystal clear and turquoise blue. There are a couple of small islands offshore that make the view from the beach so deliriously tropical and beautiful. We really enjoyed our time there - relaxing on the sand, bobbing around in that gorgeous water, strolling along the sand and taking in those incredible views. I want to go back!

Our second day on Oahu, we went to Pearl Harbor in the morning to visit the USS Arizona Memorial. It was such a sad place, but I'm glad we went, to pay our respects. It was a pretty emotional place for me, because the 1,177 men who went down with the ship during the Pearl Harbor attack are still entombed inside. The rusty, urchin-encrusted ship is clearly visible just below the surface of the water when you're inside the memorial. It's heartbreaking. There were two survivors from the Pearl Harbor attacks at the visitor's center that day, and we got to shake hands with one of them, and thank him for his service. So that was nice.

That afternoon, we had a bit of a foodie tour of Honolulu - we walked from our hotel to the Rainbow Drive In for lunch, then to Lambert's Bakery for dessert, then back to Waikiki Beach for a swim. It was a long walk - about three miles total according to Google maps, during the hottest part of the day. But it was so worth it! At the Rainbow Drive In, we split the loco moco plate, a Hawaiian dish consisting of two hamburger patties on two scoops of rice, smothered with gravy and topped with two fried eggs. It was delicious! And filling and cheap, too.

At Lambert's, we got haupia malasadas, which are coconut-filled (haupia) giant donut-hole-like pastries (malasadas). Malasadas are a Portugese desert, but apparently very popular in Hawaii. These were also cheap! And they were still warm. So delicous!

Our foodie walking tour ended at Waikiki beach, where we took a lovely dip in the ocean. After that, we went back to our hotel to change, then drove up to the north shore to try to find the beach where they filmed Lost. Along the way, we saw some amazingly bright rainbows!

I'm fairly sure that we found the beach. We had to walk a long way from the access point to get to this very remote beach, but it was a beautiful walk right at sunset. After 30 to 40 minutes of walking along the sand, we came to a spot where the beach opened up (until that point the beach was a relatively narrow ribbon between the water and the grass/plants). This section of beach was huge and pretty flat, with plenty of room for the crew and their mountains of equipment. We watched the beginning of the pilot when we got home, and it looked right. The forest at the back of the beach wasn't nearly as thick as it appears in the show, but I think that could have been easily enhanced in post-production.

After we decided that we'd found the right spot, we hustled back to our car because the park where we'd left the car was about to close. We drove over to the nearest town - the north shore is much more rural than the southern, Honolulu side of the island! - and had a delicious dinner before heading back down to Waikiki and our hotel.