Some Highlights from Hawaii

The view from the balcony of our room at the Royal Kona on the Big Island

Friday, 2/2/18

We tried to go to Mauna Kea beach to snorkel, but they said they were already full.  They only let in 40 cars at a time from the public.

Waipio Valley, the Valley of the Kings – The valley is about 6 miles deep and 1 mile across.  The road down to the valley descends 900’ in 0.6 miles and is said to average a 25% incline with parts up to 45%.  People going down must yield to those coming up and most of it is only 1 lane.  We had to go backwards around 3-4 turns for maybe 100 yards to get out of someone’s way.  At the bottom you can go towards the ocean about ½ mile where you find a black sand beach.  We saw a small wild horse on the way to the ocean.  Or you can go about a mile the other way and at one point we crossed a small river in our jeep.  Could this be the only place you go through a river while on a county road.  We could not get close but did see the 1200’ waterfall at the back of the valley, and a sign for flying rocks.  Most places warn about falling rocks but the residents of this valley are said to not like visitors much and that might be the reason for their sign warning about “flying rocks” instead. 

(From the lookout above Waipio Valley)

Pololu Valley Lookout – The lookout is 400’ above the Ocean and has a nice view, but the view gets much better as you go down.  We turned around probably about 100’ above the ocean when it did not look like the view would get better and that seemed to be what we had heard also. 

Kauhola Point and shoreline – We had to have help from some annoyed ATV guides to find this one and it did not seem like many people visited, which made it more enjoyable.  We seemed to have a ½ mile of cliff type shoreline all to ourselves, and viewed it from a variety of spots, after making it the mile or so of fairly challenging 4x4ing, at least with a stock jeep and trying to be more cautious that my earlier days. 

(I'm a fan of having my own shoreline)

Royal Kona Lu’au – We had bad traffic heading back to our hotel and did not get back with as much time as we would have liked to get ready for a Lu’au, but we did make it and enjoyed ourselves.

Saturday, 2/3/18

Snorkeling at sun up at Two-Step, which is so named because it has nice steps in the lava rock to get into and out of the water.  My snorkeling gear was fogging up too much, but after switching to Cori’s (who was not snorkeling) I could see well and saw a large number of fish of a wide variety of species and some nice coral. 

(I'm trying to figure out how best to get in and out of the water for snorkeling.  We arrived before anyone else at 7am.  Fortunately, someone who knew arrived soon.)

A Green Sand Beach is where we went next.  It is 2.5 miles (as the bird flies) of fairly challenging 4x4ing, and there are a maze of a few to many more self made roads going there.  So we probably traveled 3-4 miles each way, and we stopped about 90% of the way there because it looked a little too challenging for our stock Jeep Wrangler, such that we might have caused it damage or gotten stuck 10% of the time, which is what I tried to use as my risk cutoff.  All of this was right on the coast and was a blast even though a little nerve racking for myself and more so for Cori.

South Point – The southern most point of the US, even though Key West often says it is.  There is a black sand beach there and quite a few local fisherman spread out.  There is also maybe 25’ cliffs people jump off.  We enjoyed watching them but did not jump ourselves. 

Punalu’u Black sand beach.  The easiest black sand beach to get to and a popular place with a lot of people and a few life guards.  We saw a few sea turtles out of the water on sand or rock and then saw a few more in the water.  My only regret of the trip was not swimming with the ones in the water.

Volcano National Park –

We spent 4-5 hours in the park.  Maybe 3 of those hours were driving the roads and stopping at a number of lookouts.  We did the Thurston Lava Tube after dark, which is basically a cave created by hot lava.  The highlight was probably watching the glowing lava in a lava lake after dark.  I did that for about an hour while Cori spent much of that time in the Jagger Museum, which was connected to the viewing area. 

This was by far our longest day.  We left our hotel at 6:30am and did not get back until 10:20pm. 

Sunday, 2/4/18

Having had such a long day before, we slept in a bit, until 8am or so.  I had been frequently checking to see if Mauna Kea Mtn road was open, and found out it had opened around 8:30am Sunday.  It had been closed for 5-6 days prior to this.  We immediately packed a few things and started driving.  Mauna Kea is about 13,800 feet.  The road to the visitor ctr at 9200 feet is almost always open, but past there is spotty in the winter.  The first 5 miles past the visitor center is not paved and requires 4wd.  The last 3.5 miles is paved.  We climbed on foot an additional 100’ or so in elevation to reach the summit.

Monday, 2/5/18

We went back to Mauna Kea beach, arriving close to when they open at 7am to make sure would get in.  We were the first to arrive, I think.  Unfortunately, it was too rough for the snorkeling to be any good. It was not safe to get near the rocks where the fish often are and the sand being constantly kicked up created low visibility.  I still swam a lot and enjoyed bobbing and a little body surfing. 

We did some shopping in Kona near our hotel and then had a late lunch.  After lunch Cori kept shopping and I went to snorkel 5 miles south of our hotel at Kahalu’u, which had a ton of fish and variety. 

Tuesday, 2/6/18

We had breakfast at our hotel, which had a very good buffet.  The birds enjoyed that it was an open air venue. 

We flew from the Big Island to Oahu and got a 2018 Camaro convertible to rent.  Our place was on the northeast coast and took about an hour to get to.  Most of Oahu was very scenic with beach on one side of the road and steep lush mountains on the other.  It was too crowded for my taste though. 

View from our room we booked through AirBnB on Oahu

(Not a great picture, but it was a nice view of the ocean.)

Wednesday, 2/7/18

Pearl Harbor –

Dole Pineapple Plantation –

Scoped out a couple snorkeling spots on the way home and decided against both.

Thursday, 2/8/18

Makapu’u Hike – 2.5 mile hike on a paved path that climbed 647’.  Very scenic and could see a great deal of the coast from this SE point of Oahu.  We also saw a few humpback whales several times from near the top and at the top. 

Ho’omaluhia Botanical Gardens – very scenic drive going slightly into the mountains and having a great view of the mountains. 

Tantalus sights and lookout – great view from near the top of a mountain overlooking Honolulu and surrounding areas. 

Friday, 2/9/18

(I do not know where this picture is from, but this kind of scenery was everywhere, especially on Oahu.)

Checked out the northwest coast of Oahu

Nu’uanu Lookout – very windy

And a Buddhist Temple

Flight back to Ohio left at 9pm Hawaii time on Friday.  8 hours is almost 8 hours too long to be cooped up in the tiny space allotted in an airplane.