big island – Page 2 – The Adventures of Mike and Cindy

This was Cindy and my trip to the Big Island, one of the Hawaiian islands we had not yet visited. How we ended up taking this trip was an interesting story that just kept changing. As I have previously written about, we have a Hilton Grand Vacations time share that we continue to be annoyed by. In March of 2020, we stayed at one of our resorts for free, but had to attend a 90 minute “presentation.” When we shut them down cold on “upgrading” our membership and I got into it with the obnoxious salesman, they sent in the “nice guy.” He offered us enough points to get a week in a two bedroom at a resort in Hawaii for a reasonable price. We had 18 months to use the points and the only requirement was we had to attend a 30 minute “owner’s update.” We really wanted to take the kids to Hawaii as a last big family trip, so we purchased the points. As we signed the paperwork, we had to initial a section that said we had to attend a 90 minute “presentation.” The nice guy assured us that was only for non-members. As members, we would only have to attend the 30 minute “owner’s update.” See Day 3 below to see how that went. Anyway, it turns out travelling in 2020 was a no go do to a little thing called Covid. So when travel started to open up in 2021, I received a call from Hilton trying to sell me more crap. Instead, I questioned them about how long my points had been extended because of Covid. The answer………………No time, they still expired the second week of September 2021. So Cindy and I were able to book the two bedroom as promised, in the last week the points were still good. Garrett and Corrianne could not go, so this would be a solo trip for Cindy and I. Fast forward to the last week of August 2021, and Covid is raging so hard on the Hawaiian islands the governor of Hawaii announced he wanted all tourists to cancel their trips to Hawaii until the end of 2021. I called and canceled our trip and amazingly enough, our points were extended 6 months, to March of 2022. We booked the two bedroom again, for the second week of February in 2022. Our good friends, the Webers, were available so they planned on joining us on this trip. Then a week before the trip, Todd received a subpoena for a trial that was to start the week of the trip. Now it was just Cindy and I again and we were excited to have a trip by ourselves.

Day 1

This was our travel day. We flew on Hawaiian Airlines which is “temporarily” in Terminal 5, the Tom Bradley International Terminal. We have never flown out of that terminal and laughed when we received an email from our airline advising us to allow an extra 25-30 minutes to walk through our terminal to our gate. What gate is a 25-30 minute walk from where you go through TSA security? We were about to find out. We arrived early as requested and they were not kidding. After we breezed through security, we walked, and walked, and walked some more to get to our gate. It took a solid 25 minutes of brisk walking to get to our gate. And we wanted to be early because we still had to go through the Hawaiian covid protocol prior to boarding.

We were very early and just relaxed while waiting to go through the covid protocol. And we waited, and waited. About 20 minutes before boarding time, two Hawaiian Airlines employees showed up and had everyone line up to check in for the covid protocol. The line was really long and we were somewhere on the middle. I figured the process must be quick because there was no way those two employees could check in all of the people that were in line unless it was fast. It was not fast and they stopped checking people in when we were about 6 people away from the front of the line. They said the rest of us would have to check in at the airport in Kona. Very annoying. Hawaiian Airlines really messed that up.

Since we were on our way to paradise, we let it go, boarded the plane, and prepared for a restful flight. See how relaxed we look?

As we took off, a two year old girl a few rows behind us started to throw a fit and screamed for the first hour of the flight. Happy, happy, joy, joy. She finally calmed down and was relatively quiet for the next three hours, allowing us to enjoy views like this.

Unfortunately, this was a 5 hour flight and if you do the math, one hour of screaming, followed by three hours of calm still leaves an hour left over. That would be the hour of screaming before we landed. And we hit turbulents right before landing, and the plane made creaking and screeching noises I have never heard before. I got so stressed out I felt like I was going to pass out and had to move my mask down (literally a federal offense) so I could breath. We landed safely, I was able to pull my mask up before being arrested, and we got to walk off of the plane, down a ramp, and across the runway.

It felt very 1970’s. We were herded into the covid check-in line and to the airport’s credit, it went pretty smooth. This allowed us to fight the throngs of people waiting for the rental car shuttles. It took us close to half an hour to get to the car rental office, and here is the line that awaited us.

It literally took us two hours to get a car. But we were in Hawaii and now had a car and were off to find dinner, a Walmart for supplies, and check into our condo.

Just a short scenic drive down the road, we ate at the Pine Tree Cafe. I had the Hawaiian plate. This consists of a meat (I had pork), macaroni salad, and white rice. It is an island staple and was delicious.

We made it to the Walmart, stocked up on a few groceries, and were off. At Walmart, I found one of the oddest products I have ever seen, so I had to buy it as a gift for Garrett.

Who is Jim? What is a ball cookie? Why does Jim want one? Why are there chickens on the package? Oh so many unanswered questions. I’ll discuss the tasting of the ball cookie in the next blog post.

We got checked in and here is a look at our place and the back balcony. It was a two bedroom, two bathroom unit, so we had plenty of room.

Day 2

We woke up and this was the view from our back balcony.

This was our view from our front door.

All of the screaming children, long walks, and long lines were now forgotten. We decided to do some sightseeing and see the north and east sides of the island as we were staying in Kona, on the west side of the island. For reference, the east side of the island is the windward side, or wet side of the island. The west side is the leeward side of the island, or the dry side.

Our first stop was at the Waipi’o Lookout. This was an overlook of the Waipi’o Valley, home to King Kamehameha I. We did not do the 4.7 mile round trip hike into the valley because our tour on day 5 would take us down into the valley. At the end of this blog entry, I will include a link to more information about the Waipi’o Valley if you are interested in learning more.

From the Waipi’o Valley we headed toward Hilo. Along they way was a “scenic drive” that we had to explore. While on the scenic drive, we stopped and climbed down a hillside to a river that had a waterfall.

We forged on. Here are a few pictures of the beach at Hilo.

We had some lunch at a place named “Cronies.” It was pretty good, but not worth taking pictures of the meal. Our last stop on the east side of the island was at Big Island Candies. The name was a bit misleading as it was more of a cookie store. I was slightly disappointed, but Cindy was really happy.

Here are a few biscotti biscuits, some Valentine’s cookies, and a gift box for our wonderful neighbor in St. Joseph Missouri who gets our mail when we are not there.

There is a link at the end of this post if you want to learn more about Big Island Candies.

As we reached the west side of the island on our drive back to our condo, we looked out at the ocean and kept seeing strange splashes out in the water. As we got closer, we realized it was breaching whales. We tried to get some pictures, but were too far away. It was an amazing sight.

We rested up in our condo and searched for an interesting place for dinner. I found a place named “Waikoloa Shrimp Company” that was right down the street. We were both excited, changed our clothes, and headed out. Here is the first thing we saw when the map program said we had arrived.

We walked in and confirmed the nice shrimp restaurant we thought we were going to was actually a place inside a food court.

Since we were there, and it smelled pretty darn good, we gave it a try. We were able to eat on the outside patio, so the ambiance was nice.

I ordered the Cajun jumbo shrimp. It was delicious.

Day 3

Day 3 was Valentine’s Day. We started the day with a visit to the Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation for some coffee and a tour.

The plantation cat loved to lay in the sun and get petted by all of the visitors.

Here is our tour guide and an example of a small and huge bag of coffee beans.

Here is some of the equipment used to take raw coffee fruit into coffee beans that are then roasted so they can be made into coffee.

And here is the full variety of the stages of coffee process.

The tour was interesting and worth a stop if you visit the Big Island. There is a link to Mountain Thunder’s website at the end of this post.

The next stop was for lunch at the Poi Dog Deli. How can you not eat at somewhere named Poi Dog Deli.

The meal started with popcorn and a pickle before our sandwiches. Overall the sandwiches were average, but we got to eat at the Poi Dog Deli.

On our way back to our condo, we stopped at Kohanaiki Beach. The views were very nice.

And here are a few of the wild goats that were all over the island.

We returned to our condo and freshened up for our “presentation.” It turned out to be more of a positive experience as we learned things about our timeshare we did not know, and eventually decided to upgrade our membership to something we should be happy with. The future will tell. After the presentation, our salesman John asked where we were having dinner. It turned out we had booked a coffee shop type place, as it was one of the few places we could find with available reservations. John made a call and booked us into a really nice restaurant for our Valentine’s Day dinner. Pueo is the Hawaiian word for owl, and the food was fantastic.

Day 4

As we had our morning beverages on the back balcony, we saw what we first thought was a squirrel, but turned out to be a wild mongoose. There are wild mongoose all over the island. They were brought in to eat the rats that lived in the sugar cane fields. But the mongoose hunt during the day and the sugar cane rats are nocturnal. Not the best plan and it failed miserably. So there are lots of wild mongoose and lots of sugar cane rats.

We decided to use this day to explore the north side of the island. We took off and our first stop was at the roadside donut trailer.

The donuts were delicious.

We stopped at another beach that we had to walk down this hidden trail to get to the beach.

Of course the beach was beautiful.

We stopped at the local general store for some sandwiches. They had a phone booth in the parking lot, which is something I have not seen in many years.

We drove on to the Pololu Valley Lookout on the northern tip of the island. There is a .6 mile hike down a very steep trail to the valley floor where there is a black sand beach. The hike down was tough, but it was downhill. Here are some pictures of the hike down and some of the views.

On the way down we passed a sign warning of a Hazardous Cliff, followed by a sign warning of Falling Rock, followed by another sign warning of a Hazardous Cliff, followed by another sign warning of Falling Rock. Clearly not a safe hike. We couldn’t wait to get to the safety of the beach at the bottom.

Once we reached the beach at the bottom of the trail, we were met with this sign.

Apparently, there is nothing safe on or near this trail. That being said, here are some pictures from the beach. As far as the black sand part went, it was more like a black rock beach. The rest of the beach had some pretty impressive views.

We hiked back up the trail and that was a butt kicker, but we made it. There is a link at the end of this post with more information about the Pololu Valley Lookout.

We returned to our condo, freshened up, and got into some nice clothes for our fancy dinner at the beach front restaurant “Kamuela Provision Company” at sunset.