We’d spent a good amount of time preparing for our Hawaiʻi trip, including a lot of concentration on packing the right stuff. We knew most of the trip would be in hot/beach environments, so we had shorts, bathing suits, snorkeling gear, sunscreen, etc. But a good part of the time would be in rainy/mountainous environments, so we also packed rain gear, mosquito repellent, boots, hats/gloves, etc. And we also had flashlights, books, water bottles, rope (you never know!), and other things. Then we had to stow it all in a reasonable number of suitcases.
Dave was up on the weekend before we left for the chief purpose of war-gaming this, and we were all agreed on what to bring. We did final packing during the week, and then were totally ready at a little before 7AM on Friday when the Woburn Cab driver showed up in our driveway.
We put away the last dishes, turned the heat off, and were out of there. Pretty easy ride into Logan with the Woburn Cab driver with the luxury car and the handlebar mustache. Normal check-in at Hawaiian Airlines in Terminal E, quick trip through the TSA station, long wait at Starbucks for coffee, and then a routine wait at the gate. The Bruins had won the first game of their third round of the playoffs against Carolina the night before and I really wanted to pick up the Globe (our home subscription had been put on hiatus), but the news stand only had New York and national papers!
A full HA89 pulled out from Logan right on time at 9:20 and we then had to wait in a long line to take off, finally getting way up in the clouds and heading West. I had a good long thriller to read and the hours breezed by, though we rode through a lot of turbulence, especially over the Great Lakes.
I had the window seat next to Dave, and Sarah was on the aisle in the row in front of us, near the back of the plane and over on the right side (we had opted for the sides rather than the middle three). As we passed over the Cascades we had a beautiful view of the snow-covered peaks of Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens, soon before leaving the continent behind and heading out over the wide ocean.
Then we traveled and traveled and traveled. The trip tracker stopped showing our progress over the Pacific for some reason, but then suddenly we were approaching Oʻahu and dropped down close enough to see waves and a few boats out on the water. We had to circle for a half hour or so before we could shoot the runway at Daniel K. Inouye Airport in Honolulu, and we got some great views of the South side of Oʻahu and then of Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, and Pearl Harbor.
By the time we landed around 3:10PM local time we were getting pretty late for our connection to Kona, but the airline was aware of this of course and we and a few others quickly took the Wiki Wiki Shuttle over to the local terminal. We made the connection for the smaller plane to Kona with no problem. We got a few more views of Oʻahu as we took off on this leg, but clouds and glaring sun pretty much obscured views of Maui and Molokaʻi.
The snack service was as efficient as you might expect on a 45-minute flight, but Dave and I managed to slow them down enough to get our first Hawaiian beer, Pau Hana Pilsner from Maui Brewing Company. Soon we were descending towards and landing at Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole, and we were suddenly there! This is a charming little airport that seems to be mostly outside. The waiting areas, baggage check areas, and security are all under roofs and besides that are open to the air. We picked up our bags quickly, gawked at our first views of monkeypod trees and the Hawaiian variety of the myna bird. And then we were off to the National car rental station and soon presented with our choice of Hyundai Elantras.
We picked a blue one that we soon realized was named Hector, and it had plenty of room, a big-enough trunk, good air conditioning, and an acceptable sound system. We got great mileage out of Hector, even with all the up and down we put him through. The acceleration was not like in a muscle car but was totally fine, and the car had no problem with the steeper mountain roads, though it did require a little coaxing to stay in low gear on the steepest ascents.
Wow, this had been a pretty painless trip after much worrying about it! And even though it was now around 4:30PM local time (i.e., 10:30PM our body time), we had plenty of energy left, especially when we got on the road North, on Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway (a.k.a. the Hawaiian Belt Road, or route 19 for this stretch) and the beauty surrounded us. Hualālai with its cloud cap dominated the view to our right and the Pacific Ocean did the same to our left. And though there were clusters of green and/or palm trees here and there, we were in the middle of a sea of ʻaʻā lava, in some ways a very bleak and alarming landscape. As we cruised up the coast we could also see Kohala in front of us of course, and the bulk of Haleakalā on Maui.
The 19 miles up to the Hilton Waikoloa Resort went pretty quickly. I’d been advised that speed traps are common on the Big Island and so kept to the speed limit, but I saw none that day and actually only saw two (identifiable) policemen the whole week we were there. We got a parking space in the Hilton’s crowded lot and lugged/dragged our well-loaded suitcases and packs up the walkway to the front entrance.
The Hilton Waikoloa Resort was well-organized in its own way (if you wanted to make it your world), and was scenic, but the most memorable thing about it was that they did not miss any chance to milk more money out of you. Many people couldn’t take the long walk up the steep hill from the parking lot, especially dragging gear … it was definitely purposely less convenient than it could have been … and so the entryway and the valet parking were always doing a land-market business. When we checked in everything went smoothly too, except for the fact that they tried to tell us we wanted a room with a king bed and pull-out sofa, which I think they knew we didn’t want (I had checked three times that we had booked a room with two beds). I told them firmly that no, we wanted what we’d reserved, and they took some time to locate one. The guy finally surfaced from his computer screen and told us that yes, they had one of those, but what we probably really wanted was an upgrade to a suite with a better ocean view, 2 queens, and great access to the spa, for only $40/night more. We declined.
But the nice thing is that while we were being delayed by the upsell attempt, a guy came by with leis. Sarah accepted a flower lei and Dave and I got seashell necklaces.
Our room was over in the Ocean Tower and there were three options for getting there: walk, take the tram, or take the boat on their canal that paralleled the tram tracks. We opted for the around 12-minute tram ride (though when we got on it was going the wrong way and so it was 20 minutes), and were delighted with the interior of the Resort, a beautiful setting with their own waterfall, palm trees, beaches, artwork, and greenery everywhere. We finally got to the Ocean Tower, up the elevator to the 4th floor, and we stumbled into our new home for the next 7 nights.
It really was a fine room, though it could have been better (but not for $40/night!). The beds were fine though small (doubles), the balcony was nice, the view over the golf course was of the ocean and we saw some great sunsets from the room. The bathroom counter was barely big enough for all three of us plus the coffee maker, but it was, and the clothes storage was also barely big enough. The shower was ok, though you could not really get it cold (by New England standards) when you wanted to. The refrigerator was just a dorm-sized cube but was in its own cabinet and so was quiet. There was no microwave but we were able to set up a small kitchen area on top of the refrigerator cabinet. The air conditioning was acceptable and again, not too noisy. So the room was fine, and we soon got everything out of the suitcases and put away and got the suitcases stowed in the back of the closet. And we were there! Now what?
Well, by then we were getting pretty tired. We set out for dinner thinking we should go for the Tropics Ale House we’d seen on the map, back out of the Resort and a few blocks away. But we soon realized that would be too much of a trek. We decided to settle for the nearby Boat Landing Grill in the center of the Ocean Tower, but when we checked it out it was deserted and closed! A sign told us it would be closed for a week. So we went for choice three, which was the Kona Tap Room back near the main lobby of the Hilton Waikoloa grounds.
Getting there was the problem. This was our first experience of the long walk through the Museum Walkway from the Ocean Tower all the way down past the main lobby to the Tap Room. The Walkway is an endless succession of artwork, none of it really worth remarking on. Most of it is Asian, though the end closer to the Ocean Tower is all Western style. Most of it is reproductions, as you might expect in basically an open-air setting, though the Walkway is covered and could be mostly closed in in a severe storm. Some of the pieces are in plexiglass cases, and those may be originals.
But a lot of these pieces are just begging for a little editing, especially when you’re doing that endless perp walk (we must have trekked down that *long* Gallery 25 times in the week we were there) and after a few times you’d seen the pieces often enough to get a little irreverent about them and feel they could use an extra tweak or two. Often this editing took the form of well-placed poops (I never did this, though I was severely tempted). These weren’t really poops, but were small, round black rocks taken out of the nearby landscaping and placed artistically. They were mostly picked up by the maintenance crew each morning, but by the end of the day they had somehow reappeared. As Sarah says, this appealed to the 6-year old in all of us, though perhaps not to the cleaning ladies.
Where was I? We ended up plunking ourselves down at the Kona Tap Room and waiting forever for our food (the waitress had to help out in the kitchen, they were short staffed that night). But we got a few good Kona Brewing Company beers (their best to our tastes was the Kua Bay IPA) and a tasty dinner. By the time we finished it was getting near 3AM by our body clocks, but we made it back to the room and somehow got ourselves into bed after a long, long day.
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