Aloha!!

Aloha !!!!

Pit-stop Number 2: Hawaii
Time Spent: 4 days – 2 days at Kona (west coast), 2 days at Volcano (east coast)
Place: Big Island
Overall Feedback:
Hyped – Yes. Over-hyped – No way! The islands deserve every bit of praise that they get.

We landed at Honolulu International (HNL), and had a connecting commuter flight to Kona airport, which is one of the two main airports of the Big Island. The approach to HNL was beautiful…sorry, but can't upload pictures right now since I'm stuck with a dial-up connection...

We had about 4 hours to kill between the two flights, and decided to give a shot at our plan of saving $ by eating cup-o-noodles every so often. What followed was quite an interestingly spent half-an-hour, with us trying to get hot water for the noodles. Our first attempt was at a snack and coffee stall, whose owner told us that she’d charge us a couple of bucks for the water. Trying to be totally cheap, we told her thanks but no thanks, and moved on to a bar at the airport. The sweet girl over there initially turned down our request, but after some senti from us around how cruel the airport food stalls were to vegetarians like us, she relented. Our happiness didn’t last too long though, as the owner told us that the hot water machine was broken, and that it had a habit of not stopping once it started. This was supported by the narration of an incident when the machine nearly flooded the bar with its hot water. Not wanting to bring upon such a fate on our co-patrons of the bar, I tried going back to the coffee stall. This time the woman told me that the hot water wasn’t hot enough for the noodles. This led me back to the bar, where I asked the girl if she could microwave the noodles for us. The girl seemed to like the idea, but realized that she didn’t have any utensils to heat it in for us! So we finally said a big Mahalo to her for trying so hard, and decided to give one last shot to the coffee stall. We tried the hot water, and it was just fine. Moreover, the new person who was there didn’t’ charge us a dime, and we were finally successful in our aim of getting snacks on the cheap! Mission Accomplished!

Anyway, after that brief hot water search, we took our quick 45 min flt to Kona, and got to see some amazing views of the Big Island, which is completely made of volcanic eruptions. Much of the island even now is covered with black volcanic ash. On the big island, our time was split evenly between the west coast, which has the better weather and beaches, and the east coast, which houses the wettest city in the US as well as the world’s most active volcano. The water everywhere was an amazing blue in color. We spent much of the second day kayaking and snorkeling. We kayaked for about 45 minutes to get to Captain Cook’s monument, which was erected in fond remembrance of Mr. Cook who breathed his last at the shores of the Big Island. We were not too sure if we wanted to snorkel or not, especially given the fact that I can’t swim, but decided to take the gear after much cajoling by the guy at the rental shop. After reaching the monument and seeing a fair bunch of snorkelers around, I decided to give it a shot, and boy – was I richly rewarded or what! There was just an outstanding number of brightly colored fish, zig-zagging their way around beautiful cities made of corals. I was totally amazed at the amount of color and brightness that was hidden under the monochromatic blue ocean! M also decided to give it a try, and claims that she saw a 2 feet sea turtle. Since I had used up the entire film in our waterproof camera, she couldn’t click a pic of the turtle, and we thus have no proof if there’s any truth behind those claims. As far as I am concerned, I can’t wait to develop that film and get to see the pictures.

Next stop at the Big Island was the Waipeo valley, which was heavily covered with clouds and fog. It was quite a serene place, and we wished that the weather had been better. We met a lady there who was weaving small baskets of coconut tree leaves who proudly told us that she had seen honeymooners buy a gift from her, only to return to her to buy more of the baskets when they were celebrating their 10th or even their 15th anniversaries in Hawaii!

We wrapped up our stay at the Big Island with trips to the Akaka falls and to the volcano. We met an interesting guy at the Akaka falls who was selling some shells to visitors. Apparently he was in the business of collecting these special shells that were only found at the edge of cliffs and other scary spots close to the waterfall. He would then sandpaper these shells until they became super smooth and reflective, and started showing some beautiful patterns. Overall, it was pretty cool stuff and an interesting story. Of course, we didn’t buy anything.

We went to watch the volcano in the night, to see it do what it has been doing for the last 25 years – sputter out red hot volcano. We were told that this has led to a continuous increase in the size of the island, and as a result, locals no longer consider the volcano as a threat – they in fact consider the volcano as a steady source of creation. Although the sight was beautiful, both of us were a bit underwhelmed, largely because we expected that we would get to see flowing lava. I guess it was just a matter of too high an expectation!

And thus ended our trip to Hawaii. I can’t wrap this up without putting a good word for the lovely hosts of our B&B at the volcano – My Island B&B. Kii was an amazing hostess, and we absolutely adored her sumptuous breakfasts. It was also an interesting experience having breakfast with travelers from across the globe. Our neighbors at the breakfast table were a family spanning three generations that had decided to meet up in Hawaii as a mid-point. The grandparents had flown in from New Zealand, and the parents and kids coming in from North Carolina. The interesting part was that the flight time was longer for the NC’ians than the Kiwis, and yet all that the American got were cold drinks and pretzels, thanks to all their flights being domestic!

On day 5, we got up really early, freshened up, picked up the breakfast that our lovely hosts had put in the refrigerator for us, and drove to Hilo airport for our flight back to HNL, from where we jumped on to our flight to Kuala Lumpur through Seoul. As we left, we were totally certain that we were going to come back to Hawaii pretty soon. The next time, I’d make sure to have my pilot’s license under the belt, so that we could do some island hopping in a rental plane.