getting back to reality
The hawaii trip was alot of fun. We flew out on Aloha airlines from Oakland. The flight left about 30 minutes late but it was a nice flight (compartively speaking to other airlines these days). We got lunch, plus free headphones for the movie (which sucked), and warm chocolate chip cookies before landing. This was the first time that Denise or I had flown over the ocean, and she was a bit apprehensive. I was surprised that there was so much cloud cover over the ocean. For some reason, i just assumed that it would be cloud free, and that we'd see water in all directions. Instead we rarely saw any water at all, except for a few rare occasions. The flight to Kona Airport on the big island was just over 5 hours. This was a really cute, quaint airport. There is literally nothing indoors. The waiting areas are outdoors with large wooden picnic-style pavillions over them. Same for the security and luggage areas. We also got to deplane from both the back and front doors of the plane, since they used the staircases, rather than jetways into an indoor terminal. The area around the entire airport is nothing but a large lava field. We didn't have to wait long for our luggage, and then took the very short shuttle bus ride to the Avis car rental building, where we got a Ruby red pontiac grand am.
The drive to the hotel was about 7 miles north of the airport, and was again largely all lava fields. Seems that the local idea of a good time is to spell out wards, almost like graffitti, with white coral on the black lava. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of short blurbs spelled out on the lava along the drive north from the airport. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, i guess), all of the roads on the big island are two lane roads, and there are no freeways or highways. Now that is sufficient in many areas, but the more populated areas really are feeling the pinch from the traffic volume. There were quite a few places were we were lucky to be going 30MPH because it was so congested. At any rate, we arrived at the hotel at about 1:30PM. The hotel/resort was gorgeous. It was immaculately landscaped with all sorts of tropical flora, plus waterfalls, and man made beaches. We also got a leia of white & purple orchids upon check-in. Our room was a rather long walk from where we were able to park, because we opted against paying someone to park the car for us. The room was nice enough, but nothing that extravegent in my opinion. There were 2 large beds, and a large floor to ceiling window, and the requisite mini-bar with reidiculously overpriced drinks and snacks in it. My only gripe about the room was that the air-conditioning was not really able to cool the room below 72F. But i digress. The weather at the resort was tropically gorgeous the entire time. That is, in the 80s, and moderately humid. But we were expecting that, and it wasn't too bad. We had several hours to kill that afternoon, because my employer sponsored dinner wasn't until 6:30PM that night. While waiting we started to get the first of many surprise gifts. The first few were towels, a shirt, a duffle bag, and wine. Over the remainder of the trip we got alot more wine and chocolates each evening.
Sunset was just around 7PM, and it was beautiful, as the hotel was on the Kohala coast of the big island, meaning that it faced west to the ocean. The 'dinner' that night was referred to as heavy hoer-deurves, and that was probably an accurate description. The drinks were about 85% alcohol, and were incredibly strong. I had one margarita and was feeling a bit tipsy.
We both slept well that night, but I woke up at 4:30AM and couldn't fall back to sleep. I was still on Pacific daylight time, even though i was in Hawaiian Standard time. Unfortunately, I had a business meeting at 9AM, so I had *alot* of time to kill that morning, and nothing good to do in it. The meetings actually was painfree, and ended early. We explored the hotel grounds a bit before lunch. There was a man made beach, which had some lava rock butting out of the sea, and also a freshwater pond immediately behind it that was full of koi and tadpoles. Denise also found some interesting coral that washed up on the shoreline. We got boxed lunches at 11:30AM, and decided to drive to Panaluu Black Sand beach. This was my first taste of significant driving on the island, and it wasn't fun. Not even remotely. While the distance to the beach was about 75 miles, the drive took almost 2.5 hours. The first half of the drive was painfully slow,going through relatively highly populated areas of the southeast side of the island on the winding 2 lane roads. Then we drove through some less populated mountainous areas which also made the driving slow. The last third of the trip wasn't too bad, as the roads were straighter and significantly less congested. Now sure, the scenery was quite beautiful for large stretches of the drive, but its hard to enjoy it when i'm hitting the brakes every few feet, or crawling along at 25MPH. The beach seemed to be primarily used by locals (which was fine with us), and was moderately crowded. We'd never been to a black sand beach before, and it was kinda surreal. The sand was pulverized lava rocks, which looked something like the consistancy of poppy seeds. Unfortunately, Denise didn't think about the fact that dark objects obsorb heat faster than light, which meant that the sand was quite literally scalding hot to walk on bare-foot. She burnt the bottom of one of her feet quite badly to the point that she had a huge blister after walking about 40 feet. She ended spending the rest of our time there sitting on a log in the shade of palm trees. The beach is supposed to have endangered sea turtles, but I didn't see any, although Denise saw one swimming out to sea. I thought that it was quite beatiful overall, and I had a good time. The drive back to the hotel was somewhat more painful than the drive out, since it was now nearing 'rush hour', so the roads were even more congested in the populated areas. That night we ended up having dinner at the hotel at Brown's Beach House. The food & service were excellent, and there was also live entertainment (hawaiian singers with a hula dancer). We had fried rock shrimp as an appetizer, I had a heirloom tomato salad, and Denise had pork chops, and I had soft shelled crab with a fresh local grilled fish (whose name escapes me). I slept really well that night, and would have slept in had my cell phone not rung with a wrong number at 6AM.
On Friday I had another 9AM business meeting (which also ended early), and then we decided to split up for the day. I *really* wanted to drive the Saddle Road but Denise didn't want to spend hours in the car. So I drove the road, and she stayed at the hotel to relax on the beach. The drive was *alot* of fun. Yes, it was another 2 lane road, but it was practically desolate, and the scenary was gorgeous, so I was able to drive at the pace that I preferred. About 2/3 of the way east across the Saddle Road is the turn off for the world famous Keck Observatory on the volcano Mauna Kea. I had read in advance that the road to the top of Mauna Kea (at 13,796ft.) is closed to everything but 4 wheel drive vehicles. So I wasn't sure how much I'd see. There was a visitor's center at 9200ft, so I figured I'd check it out. This was still fairly high up (although the saddle road at the turn off is around 6000 ft up, but doesn't feel like it due to the two volcanos on either side), so the views were still quite impressive. The visitor center had several small exhibits on each of the telescopes and arrays at the top of the volcano, along with some stern warnings about the altitude and road hazards of climbing to the summit. Even at the visitor's center, I could feel some early effects of the altitude. I was a little light headed. At this point I was trying to decide if i should make an attempt to drive to the summit when i saw some other tourists in a normal car head up the mountain. At that point I figured I'd give it a try too. Worst case was that the road was too steep or rough, and I'd have to turn back. The road was quite steep, but overall the quality wasn't bad at all, and I made it to the top. The first few miles are gravel, however the last 3 are paved, in order to reduce the dust in the air for the telescopes. The views were nothing short of incredible. It was like being on top of the world, as I was above the cloud line, and could see for miles in every direction. The car wasn't too happy about the climb, and the engine got close to overheating on a few occasions. I felt the effects of the altitude almost immediately at the top. Just climbing out of the car seat got me out of breath, and I was getting a headache, and was quite dizzy immediately. I managed to snap off a few pictures and then made the drive back down again. I actually had a small adventure on the drive back down. This large tractor like vehicle was regrading the road, and was coming up in my lane (where I was going down), so I had to switch to the other side. The problem was that this vehicle was plowing a pile of rocks into the center of the road that made it impossible for me to cross back into the correct lane again. I drove for a few feet further, but quickly realized that I had to get back over or I'd end up hitting oncoming traffic head on. So I stopped the car, got out (on the edge of a cliff) and literally kicked the rocks in the center of the road out of the way so that I could drive back over to the right side. The remainder fo the drive was uneventful, and I actually got back to the hotel a bit after 3PM to find Denise taking a nap. We looked around some hotel gift shops that afternoon, and got David two Hawaiian shirts. That night we attended a formal dinner sponsored by my employer. We were kinda hoping it would be some kind of traditional hawaiian food, but it was ordinary american cuisine instead (steak, salad, etc). It was still quite good food, and they plied us with alcohol from start to finish. After dinner, they provided after dinner drinks, and I tried port for the first time. It tasted quite like Robitussin, although it burned as it went down. I think i'll pass in the future. They were also handing out cigars to anyone interested. I didn't parttake, but Denise took one, but never opened it. This other guy, who clearly had never smoked a cigar in his life before, tried to smoke one, and had trouble getting it lit, and then choked after the first puff. It was amusing. We ordered room service for breakfast for the following morning, since we were planning to drive to Hawaii Volcanos National Park.
The breakfast was supposed to arrive between 6 & 6:20AM, but they were knocking at the door at 5:55AM, just as I was coming out of the shower. So I ran to the door half dressed, and then woke Denise for breakfast. It was really nothing special, and was, of course, grossly over priced. We ended up taking the Saddle Road again across the island, since I had such good driving time the day before. Thankfully, it worked out well again, and we got to the park in about 90 minutes. We were really hoping to see real live lava flowing, but Pele was not working in our favor at the time, and all we saw was old, solidified lava. It was still impressive, but wasn't nearly as memorable. I also trecked through the Thurston Lava Tube. We drove back to the resort later in the day, and it took nearly 3 hours (almost double what it took to get there).
The next morning (last Sunday) we ate a rather extravagent breakfast buffet (costing over \$60 for the two of us). Just about anything you could possibly want for breakfast was available. We then checked out and made the drive back to the airport. We did stop at a scenic turnoff where we could see the island of Maui in the distance, seemingly floating above the ocean. We got to the airport rather early (about 3 hours before the flight took off). It was rather uneventful, although one of the people ahead of us in the security checkpoint did make a fool of herself. The security personal were asking each person where they were going, and this woman said "i'm going to the United States", at which point the security guard reminded this dolt that she was in the United States already, and asked her again where she was flying. The flight back was uneventful, and we got home just after 9PM (Pacific), after taking off at Noon (Hawaiian).