OK, it was morning in paradise! We did a pretty good job of stretching out the clock, though I was up by 6:15 or so (12:15 body clock time, but changing). They have a breakfast place in the resort and so after our morning ablutions we headed there, soon after they opened at 7. And though we were ready for outrageous prices everywhere we turned, this was over the top. Their full breakfast buffet was $40 per person, OMG!!! Whatever, we needed food badly and so went for it that morning. And it was great, nice omelet station, good bacon and sausage choices, great fruit and pastry choices, and fine juice and coffee. But this experience redoubled our determination to get ourselves to a grocery store and not be bound to restaurants for breakfasts and lunches.
It also illustrated how big the damn Resort is. The breakfast place was well located in the middle of the complex but was not close to our room and had taken some walking to get to. We exited out the back of the “Big Island Breakfast” (our waitress, Sally, told us that she expected us back each morning we’d be there, she may still be waiting) and Dave went directly back to the room while Sarah and I started out on the meandering pathways to try to get oriented. We took a look at their cesspool of a lagoon (I exaggerate, but this was more a milky fish pond than the clear water you see in brochures) and wandered past the seaside chapel, through some nice bronze gates, past beautiful flowering plants, past an intriguing looking swimming pool (the slide wasn’t yet open), out to Buddha Point. There were a couple of guests “meditating” there and so we didn’t disturb them, but continued around past a few workmen lazily setting up for a destination wedding on their lawn, and around to the far side of the Ocean Tower that our room looked out on.
We saw several of the mynas, sparrows, doves, and Saffron Finches that we’d seen out our balcony, and also a lone Nēnē, Hawai ʻ i’s endemic goose.
But then there was no way back inside the Resort unless we reversed our steps, and that would have been giving up! We kept on going and kept on going around the Ocean Tower and the Palace Tower, thinking that we’d find a way back in and well aware that we didn’t have our hats or our sunscreen on, and the heat was starting to soar. We tried to sneak back in over a wall, but realized we’d have to drop down pretty far to do it, so didn’t. Finally made it back to the entrance to the Convention Center in the Resort and ducked inside to the welcome shade and air conditioning. Stairs took us back to the Museum Walkway and we were back where we started! Oh well, it had been a successful excursion in getting us indoctrinated to the scope of the Resort.
Back in the room and we agreed to go ahead with the plan we’d discussed for our first day. We realized there was a danger of us being hit with jet lag-related fatigue and so didn’t want to attempt a huge trip over to the other side of the island. Instead we sunscreened up, loaded our packs, made our way back down the blessed Museum Walkway and through the heat down the hill to the car, and got the hell out of Dodge (with some delay at the self-serve parking kiosk, which was very temperamental, everyone struggled with it).
Well, we thought we were getting out of there, but it was a long drive by other Resorts out Waikoloa Drive up to Queen K Highway, where we turned left towards the small port town of Kawaihae (12 miles away) and were surrounded by beauty again. The South Kohala coast became less of a lava field and more of a desert landscape, with rolling brown hills and pockets of greenery. Our windshield was filled with a vision of Haleakalā over on Maui again, and it was a bright, warm morning with a gentle trade wind. We were tempted to check out one of the highly-rated beaches we rolled by on the left, but instead pressed on up to our first stop, Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historical Site, just South of Kawaihae.
We turned downhill into the Puʻukoholā Heiau parking lot and spent a wonderful hour or two looking at exhibits in their open-air plaza and getting a good dose of Hawaiian history, and then walking their trails down the hill to view the ruins of the namesake Heiau and also the older Mailekini Heiau. The latter was built pre-Europeans and still holds many archaeological mysteries, while the newer one was built by Kamehameha I and so coincided with the introduction of European influence.
We followed the trail around and back up the hill to the car, past Spencer Beach (County) Park. This wasn’t a long visit, but it was just what we needed. The climate soothed our souls, the ocean was blue and stretched for miles, and the wind was constant and insistent but gentle. We all agreed that this short stop marked the real beginning of our vacation. Until then we’d been traveling, lost in practical matters, and hadn’t been able to slow way down and really absorb all of this new stuff we were seeing, smelling, and feeling. We’d experienced the same thing on our California vacation in 2012; in that case it took us until we were finally in the woods at Yosemite to feel we were on vacation. And that walk around Puʻukoholā Heiau NHS gave us the time to finally feel acclimated and to realize that this was a real, tangible part of our world, with its own history, culture, and character.
Yay! We were all feeling great and continued on up the Kohala coast, finally twisting around toward the East and skirting the Northern tip of the Island. It suddenly turned impossibly lush, the road turned smaller and smaller and went over several one-lane bridges, and we were way up on a bluff over the pounding Pacific on the windward side of the Island. Our goal was the Awini Trail down into Pololū Valley at the very end of route 270.
It was a Saturday and there were a lot of cars parked along the edges of the road by the time we arrived that late morning. I don’t know where to begin describing it. The colors were wonderfully bright and intense, the East-Northeast trade wind was strong and steady, pushing long breakers and then rising up the cliff and past us into the sky. Though there was chatter from all the excited people at the trailhead, there was also a peacefulness. And the backdrop of the sensory experience was the smell of the warm dirt and the mature plants holding the sea cliff together, and the exuberance of the plant life.
Our guidebook (Hawaii, the Big Island Revealed by Andrew Doughty, 8th ed.) says that as good as the view down into the valley is from the overlook at the top, the best view is about a third of the way down the trail, and it was just breathtaking. You could see directly down to the black sand beach and the beautiful colors of the ocean. But then you turned your gaze up a bit and could see way, way down the coast past lovely cliff after lovely cliff, pocked with caves and bordered with small islands and black rocks. And then you looked up at the cliffs, covered with the lushest varieties of green trees and bushes, and then inland up the contours of the cliffs where the mist was clinging to the heights and you could infer the valleys leading further inland by the patterns of the mist.
We kept on down the trail, passing and being passed by a variety of types, from talkative tourists who weren’t wearing the right shoes for such a hike, to families with lots of kids who showed many different kinds of energy and inertia, to young people in impossibly good shape who had the right shoes, the right packs, and all the right gear for a long hike over into the other valleys, to some North Island types who were wearing no shoes and were obviously a little annoyed that there were people from away cluttering up their special spot.
Down at the bottom there was a forest of lovely trees leading to a small river that twisted up into the yellow, green, and brown valley. The river mouth led gently to the beach (seemingly uphill?!?), and that was quite a contrast to the dreamy riparian atmosphere. It was a jumble of round rocks and sharp boulders being lifted up and smashed against each other with every incoming breaker. This was not a beach for swimming or strolling on … the piles of rocks did pull back in some places to show stretches of black sand, but they were being rearranged constantly and were far from a stable surface.
We made our way down it anyway, determined to reach the caves that were exposed at the other end and to find the continuation of the trail up the cliff into the next valley. But we weren’t going to extend our hike that far! We were feeling pretty ready for lunch but temporarily settled for a few water breaks while we explored the far end of the beach, and then made our way back by a small trail through the woods behind it.
We were hot and nicely exhausted by the time we found a lovely spot for lunch, where we were surrounded by the woods but close enough to the beach to watch the waves and the spray. There were some comfortable logs to sit on among the clumps of lava boulders. I’d made a slew of peanut butter and bacon sandwiches for the trip and they hit the spot there, along with a lot of water and a long rest.
Time to cross back over the river on another jumble of small rocks and set off back up the trail. As with many situations, going back seemed shorter than getting there. And though we stopped for many short rests while climbing that very steep trail, it ended sooner than we wanted it to. This dip into Pololū Valley had been another magic few hours in an impossibly beautiful place.
The car hadn’t fallen into the valley, though we wouldn’t have been surprised to find the sides of the road sagging even more than they were. Things probably collapse into the valley with some frequency. The car was hot and we were too, but a little breeze through open windows and then a lot of blasting air conditioning put things right.
We wound back up the small and twisting road, over the one-lane bridges, heading for the turn South onto the Kohala Mountain Road (route 250) in Hawi. Our plan was to head up the Mountain Road and then down into Waimea, where we’d pick up the Belt Road again (route 190 for that stretch) and head down the Waikoloa Road to a promised grocery store, a possibly quick and uneventful 45 mile drive.
BUT … as with many things, this involved more than you might think. It was beautiful and blue and bright and hot down in the valley and up on the North-facing cliff in Hawi. But then we turned up the ridge road and started going up and up Kohala mountain, and then saw the clouds closing in, and kept on going up and up, and then we were shut in by a pea-soup cloud and then it started raining, even though the sun was still poking through here and there. This was very much ranch country, even as vertiginous as it was. We saw horses, cows, sheep, water tanks, and pumps in the middle of hilly pastures, fences, and barbed wire. The growth had turned from tropical to large trees and thick, tall grass. It would take a lot of cows to eat all that grass, and the ones we saw were trying.
But then we kept on going up! I thought Kohala was the small, older mountain?? We got up to around 4200 feet and felt very high up in the sky. The peak of Kohala was to our left and was dramatically split vertically by a thick cloudbank, like a half-pulled back curtain, streaks of gray and thick swirls of cotton candy on one face, while the other was clear and bathed in the afternoon light.
And then we went down and down, even steeper than the road we’d just driven up! We landed in the town of Waimea (Kamuela), where we turned left on 19 and right on 190, and down the 20 or so miles to the Waikoloa Road. There we turned right and went downhill even more, and even more, twisting and turning through the late afternoon light while the surrounding vegetation turned into stunted trees and bleached grass as we got closer and closer to the coast.
Turned right into Waikoloa Village finally and there it was (as the guidebook had told us), a little gas station with a small KTA Super Store behind it. I didn’t know how much to trust the gas gauge at that point, especially since the needle hadn’t moved that much even with such a strenuous drive. And we were planning a long trip for Sunday. But it only took a few gallons to top up the tank, and then we headed for a KTA experience.
There was no microwave in the hotel room and only a small refrigerator, so we shopped carefully. We loaded up with a reasonable amount of yogurt, cereal, (native) bananas, bread, peanut butter and jelly, granola bars, beer, coffee, and big bottles of water. And we remembered to get paper towels, plastic utensils, and sandwich wrappings!
Loaded it all in the car, drove back through a few last surprise rain drops, and soon we were back at the hot and arid Resort. We elected to take the tram again since we were loaded down, and it started off the wrong way again. It was very crowded and jolly that afternoon however. Our compartment-mates admired our smart purchases, most of all the beer, which they seemed to hope we’d crack. They lived in Hilo but had driven over to the Resort to splurge on a Saturday night outing. Kind of strange if you ask me, but I guess if you live on an island, you take variety of recreation where you can find it.
Made it back to the room and absolutely packed the dorm-style refrigerator with our purchases, then cracked a beer and took a few deep breaths. We’d had a busy day already but had not gotten a late start, and there was still some time left in the afternoon and we were surprised to realize that we had some energy left. So we decided to make it a “pool” afternoon.
The Hilton Waikoloa has a variety of pools, and we thought we’d find some fun there. We’d loved the assortment of pools at the Mexican Resort we’d visited, but unfortunately these just didn’t fill that same bill for us. Maybe it was the lack of poolside bars … yeah, I’m sure that had something to do with it.
We picked up beach towels from the machine downstairs and then headed right over to the “adult” pool in the nicely shaded center of the huge Ocean Tower. There were a few grumpy-looking adults settled in on lounges around the pool, and a few in the water. We jumped right in but soon realized that a) it was a salt-water pool for some reason (why do you put salt water in a pool?? I find this ridiculous) and b) no part of it was over 5 feet! What a lousy excuse for a pool. I went back and forth a few times, but swimming/lounging in a pool like that is not that much fun, especially when the grumpy “adults” at poolside obviously thought that fun was out of the question.
So we went over to the “Kohala Pool” and found that to be a little not-fun also. This pool is an array of 4 or 5 (depending on who’s counting) small pools connected by slides, with attempts at greenery scattered in between. Dave and I gave it a shot, but it was full of obnoxious kids, the slides were lame, the pool again never got that deep, and the area was ringed with glaring parents. Like, what were these suspicious guys doing in the kids pool?? So we got out and joined Sarah at a chair she’d barely had time to camp out at. We all decided that we’d had it for the pool experience, let’s go have a beer.
Showered the sweat, salt water, chlorine, and whatever from the day off back at the room, and watched a nice sunset from our balcony. Ho-hum, how could we complain about this?!? I will describe fauna in more detail in a future post, but one of the most delightful things about hanging out on our balcony was watching the endlessly curious and very busy birds. Watching the mongooses out on the golf course was another great source of amusement.
The people watching was sometimes fun too. The destination wedding had been in full swing when we were out at the pools, and when we retired to our balcony we watched a gaggle of the kids spill out onto the golf course, where they took over the third green and had lots of fun. And then the bride and groom came over with a trio of professional photographers/makeup artists, and they posed for pictures with the sunset in the background. Very nice!
OK, enough of that, it was time for a dinner excursion to the Tropics Ale House. Sarah and I had discovered how to escape out the Convention Center entrance in our excursion that morning, and this was great because it meant we didn’t have to walk all the way back to the main lobby. Theoretically we could have cut over diagonally to the Ale House from there, across to Keana Place. But when we got there we saw that the area in between was a huge ʻaʻā field, and it would have taken at least several hours to walk over and around the boulders, and this would not have been a good time. So we stayed on the sidewalk and it was a very pleasant stroll over there as the day started to cool down just a little, the afterglow from the sunset lingered and lingered, we could hear the breakers on the coast to our right, and the lights of the Resort area came on all around us.
Unfortunately, when we got there we found over half their beers were off! And they had a noisy clientele that Saturday night and a pretty small menu. But I had another Kua Bay and then a New Belgium Voodoo Ranger and we had an acceptable meal (I got a beef and pork burger). And then Dave and I split a bottle of Rogue “Dead Dead” Ale, their Dead Guy Ale aged in whiskey barrels. Even so, we made it back alive after the leisurely meal and the long, long walk back to the Ocean Tower (which included a tour of their conference facilities), and soon it was time for bed after a long day.
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