Active volcano, deep gorges, towering waterfalls, bed of hard lava rock, black sand, dense vegetation and all this in a 4000 square mile area is what fascinated me for a whole week when I took the air, water and land to see this fascinating Big Island of Hawaii.
Nature and culture has always attracted me, so no wonder I was thinking of going for a vacation with my family and among various destinations, Hawaii was one of the options. Among the many islands, I decided on going to the most diverse and largest among the archipelago. A five-hour flight from Los Angeles to Kona was a smooth sail and we reached late in the evening. Walking down the air stairs from the flight and into an open and relaxed setting of the airport we were waiting for the Hawaiian agriculture official to scan all baggage to make sure no one is bringing in even a fruit from the mainland.
As we head to pick our rental vehicle, I was happy to see that the car rental company upgraded us to a nice Cadillac CTS V8. Couldn’t have asked for more. We drove down to Hilton Waikoloa Village resort, which will now become our home for the next week. “Kirin – the Chinese Restaurant” at the resort was our only option to get some food. It was amazing to see the warmth at 11pm from the restaurant manager and the server. While we finished our dinner, our baggage was in the room and the monorail going back and forth the resort took us to the ocean towers.
It has been a while when I was woken by chirping birds and not my alarm clock. What astonished me was the large number of avian species which nestled in the man made lagoons and flora around the resort. As I walked into the balcony my eyes got a treat of the blue pacific on one side and the giant Mauna Kea. Mauna Keu is apparently the tallest mountain if measured from the bottom of the ocean. It also provides an amazing view of the star for all who love the whole idea of stargazing. It is also referred to as the “white mountain” as its peak often receives snow standing at 13,500 plus feet.
Now with all the relaxed morning starting, we fed ourselves with some scrumptious breakfast. This has spread to cater the Japanese too, who flocked this place in large number of groups. The entire resort had Japanese script along side English. Most of the staff spoke both Japanese and English.
As we started to explore the resort and ventured out to surrounding area, we met some fabulous concierge folks at the resort. Not only did they talk to us about wonderful resort and what it offered but also what we could see in and around the island. They also helped us book the amazing Luau show that we absolutely enjoyed every moment of it.
In my quest to enjoy the beauty of this island, I started off by taking to the skies with the magnificent Eco-Star chopper and the super pilot Captain Scott from the Blue Hawaiian team. The morning sunrise and flying over the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa could not have been better. Suddenly we get to see the Pu’u O’o (pronounced as poo woo) where the cracking lava and smoke make you feel what Mother Nature can bring in the form of devastation. Even the lava has not been flowing into the sea since early this year; all the activity was just building up for another eruption. The volcano of Kilauea has been active since 1983 and lava flow has been increasing the coastline. The trip took me to Kohala valley, which took me with awe as we made some breath-taking maneuver to see the towering water falls and dense vegetation.
After this fantastic aerial tour we took to explore the various historic sites, beaches, and parks. The Volcanic national park just blew our minds away when we could feel the steam puffing out of the steam vents and experienced the lava tube walk.
Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory and plantation was our next destination where we could relish a variety of way this wonder nut was processed and used. This is the largest processing company of this highly priced nut. Could we forget the world famous Kona coffee? Off course not, this priced and valuable coffee is grown in an area of around 4,000 square acres by more than 500 registered small coffee growers. Greenwell coffee was our next destination. We enjoyed some fresh brewed coffee along with a wonderful tour of their processing plant.
As we were closing to our wonderful, fun filled week we decided to spend sometime with the dolphins of the dolphin quest lagoon. It was an amazing experience to be with the dolphins and touch them. At one end these experiences were making us happy and we were enjoying every bit of it, but at the same time we were soon going to miss this paradise on earth and head back to hustle and bustle of another Southern California life.
A view of the Big Island through my eyes can be seen @http://worldunfolded.smugmug.com/