Still Day 8 – Arrival on the Big Island

After our flight landed, we collected our bags, and got our rental car, we had juuuuuust enough time to stop in at Pine Tree Cafe for dinner. The ladies working there were so, so nice to us. Ian was quizzing them about their fries – how were they cooked, how were they seasoned, how big were they (he’s picky, go figure). In addition to patiently answering all his questions, they brought one out for him to try (he loved them).

I had a delightful fried shrimp sandwich. Maya had a very small serving of poke. Sean went overboard. He ordered a mixed plate with garlic chicken and hamburger steak with gravy. I got to try everything and there’s no denying it was all spectacular, but wow did he have a lot of food.

We arrived at our fancy-pants hotel in the dark. More so than any of our other island hotels, this one has a resort vibe. It’s gigantic. There are separate pools for the kids and the adults. The kids’ pool has a 200-foot slide, which Maya and Ian were very, very excited about.

Day 9 – Sunrise at Pololu Point, Akaka Falls, Rainbow Falls

When we were originally laying out this vacation and deciding what we would like to do and see, we cooked up this plan to rent a jeep and try to get to the top of Mauna Kea to watch sunrise. (If I remember correctly, the need for 4WD is less about the rough road and need for high clearance – the road is actually well-maintained – but more about the steep grade as you head back downhill. You need to be in low gear to keep from burning out your brakes.)

In researching what kinds of vehicles were good for driving up to the summit, we happened upon a warning that you shouldn’t proceed beyond the visitor’s center if you are under 13 years of age, and that the prolonged high altitude exposure could cause bodily damage. I’m a scoffer, so I initially scoffed and figured we’d all be fine. But there’s a difference between taking stupid risks with your own body and health and life and taking a risk with that of your children, and so I looked into it further. After reading about the higher risk for pulmonary edema and cerebral edema, coupled with the fact that you’re really far from anywhere that can help you, it just didn’t seem worth the risk. We’d live to see that sunrise another time. Or maybe we wouldn’t. No big deal; there are lots of beautiful things in the world.

And so it was that our poor, mistreated kids were woken up a little after 4:00 in the morning (their parents were up even earlier) so that we could go watch sunrise at Pololu Point instead. The 1.5 hour car ride was completed almost entirely in the dark.

It was every bit as beautiful as we were lead to believe. Maya and Ian got to marvel at just how quickly the sun went from a slight sliver on the horizon, to a half-circle, to a full sun. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy, so we didn’t get to see the golden morning light washing over the cliffs. Given that we had not yet had breakfast and had not yet fully recovered from our epic waterfall hike, we chose not to do the hike down to the beach, though it looked like it would have been quite lovely as well.

We had started to listen to “Divergent” by Veronica Roth on our return drive from Alabama at the end of July. We thought we’d listen to the book during some of our longer drives on the Big Island as well, so now that the kids were both truly awake, we worked on our book some more. It kept them from getting bored, but unlike screen time, it left their eyes available to take in the unique Hawaiian landscape in all its endless variety as we drove around the island.

Our stop after Pololu was to indulge in breakfast at the Hawaiian Style Cafe in Waimea. We had kind of been looking forward to breakfast here the whole trip, so lovely was their menu. They warn you that their portions are big, but I honestly had no idea what was in store for us. And worse still, we were so busy eating, none of us remembered to snag any photos. Whoops.

For example, I ordered their famous hash, which came with rice or hash browns (the latter), two eggs (over easy), and a pancake, waffle, or toast (waffle, for Ian). Holy. Shit. That waffle was like a whole second breakfast. With just my order, I could probably have fed any three people. By the time we realized our mistake, it was much too late. Each of us had ordered our own breakfast. And Sean even upgraded his pancake side to haupia pancakes, which turned out to be a very wise choice because the haupia sauce they slathered on top was absolutely divine.

Their menu explains that leftovers don’t go to waste, that they’re fed to the pigs. Sean has a new theory that the Hawaiian Style Cafe also runs a pig farm and we customers supplement the pigs’ feed.

After breakfast, we hit the Waipi’o Valley Overlook. The coastal scenery was gorgeous, of course. We also saw a kitty hanging out by a cross that may or may not have been marking a grave (probably it was a memorial). The cat looked for all the world like it was guarding that cross though. It seemed to kitty-smile at us, and we thought it might come over for some scritches, but it stayed firm at its chosen post.

We also saw some really neat spiders hanging out all over the ceiling of the picnic bench area of the lookout. Ian, unfortunately, is not a big fan of spiders, so he was on edge while we were there. We looked them up, they are Hawaiian Orb Weaver, Hawaiian Garden Spider, or Banana Spider, depending on who you ask.

The Laupahoehoe Point lookout may have been the kids’ favorite. There were huge black lava boulders to clamber over, little crabs to watch scuttle about, interesting rocks, shells, and fossils to hung, and several colorful little birds to watch.

We were all still full from breakfast, so we skipped our lunch spot and drove straight to Akaka Falls. In 2008, this was a loop trail. In 2024, it was under construction, so it was an out and back instead. The 400-foot tall falls were still magnificent, and the thick coating of tropical vegetation was a sight to behold. This is a well-loved waterfall though, and there were a LOT of people, so that part wasn’t always pleasant. In fact, if you ask Maya which of the hikes she liked the best, her enjoyment was inversely proportional to quantity of people on the trail.

We took a particularly pretty drive (the Onomea Scenic Drive, the guide says) along the Old Mamalahoa Hwy (instead of the more direct Mamalahoa Hwy), and the scenery was beautiful. The drive goes past the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden along this route, and I just have to wonder, as much as the islands are covered in an abundance of widely varied flora, what do they choose to display in the botanical garden?

We stopped in at some random place for shave ice and snacks, and all the things we had were nice enough. The highlight here though was a friendly rooster who would eat pieces of tortilla chip from our hands. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Rainbow Falls was nice enough, but wasn’t particularly striking after our visits to Akaka Falls earlier that day and Hanakapi’ai Falls on Kauai. However, the grounds around the falls were pretty. There was an impressively large banyan tree that we had fun hiding in and climbing on.

After this, we decided to head back to the hotel to let the kids have some pool time. For the record, this is the first time we’d seen our hotel in the daylight. It was very large. As predicted, the 200-foot water slide was a huge hit with the kids who made endless trips down the slide, coming down forward, backward, on their knees, resting their heads on their hands and looking hilariously nonchalant.

After swimming, Sean and I let the kids hang out and get showered while we foraged for dinner that night and something easy for breakfast the next day. As we headed from the hotel room down into the parking lot, we were presented with a giant rainbow! It was amazing.

Foodwise, I was personally pushing hard for more of that excellent and affordable grocery store poke. Alas, by the time we got to the Sack-n-Save, there wasn’t much left. We wound up snagging dinner from some random ramen joint that night instead. The kids had the pleasure of hanging out at the table on the deck and eating their ramen – a compromise since Ian wanted to eat his ramen in bed. The poor dears.

Day 10 – Kealakekua / Captain Cook, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, Manta Magic

Today we started and ended our day in the ocean. After a quick breakfast of provisions we had collected in our hotel room (my guava bread from the Sack N Save was excellent), we suited up to go on a snorkel trip to Kealakekua Bay, the same site as the Captain Cook Monument.

The Captain Cook Monument is a little controversial, especially to native Hawaiians. Apparently, explorer James Cook wasn’t known to be particularly kind to the indigenous people he encountered in his travels. It sounds like he wound up stopping in Kealakekua Bay in 1779 to repair a ship’s mast and stayed for a bit. On February 14th, he attacked a village and shot one of the native noblemen. He was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in the surf. The big 27-foot monument is set on land that is technically owned by the British. There’s a small plaque in the water that’s said to mark the exact spot of his demise. Evidently this monument gets defaced with some regularity, even though it is reachable only by docking a boat or by hiking a 2 mile trail. The area is also a very popular snorkeling location.

We got ourselves to the right location and then kind of meandered till we figured out the right group to board with. While we were waiting, Ian – reptile hunter extraordinaire, caught one of the geckos we had seen all over the place during this vacation. We looked it up – it’s a Gold Dust Day Gecko. After Ian held it for a bit and let it crawl around on his arms, he kindly gave Maya a turn holding it and checking it out as well.

The morning looked like it was going to be cloudy, but as our boat pulled into the bay, the sun shone down and the ocean colors came alive. Ian was in the water for all of about three minutes before he wanted out. The crew assured us they’d keep him entertained while we snorkeled. I love it that the kids are now old enough that I feel okay with that. We have joked a few times now that Ian’s trip was more of an expensive boat ride than anything else.

Maya lasted maybe 30-40 minutes before she became irritated with a wonky mask (which I understand) and headed back to the boat. From the kids, we heard that snacks and sodas and jumping from the boat were part of the fun while Mom and Dad stayed in the water.

The snorkeling was great. The water shimmered, the corals popped, and there were so many different fish to observe. I told Sean later on that it was like a little kid had gotten ahold of a crayon box and let their imagination run wild.

Toward the end, while I was watching some of the smaller fish feeding among the coral, I happened to see an octopus unfurl and move a few feet before camouflaging itself to invisibility again. I called Sean and his GoPro over. We stared and stared and I was starting to worry that he would doubt me when we finally saw another small burst of movement. We were running out of time when I happened to see Sean dive down and swim almost to the bottom. Sure enough, he managed a brief recording of the octopus to show Maya, our octopus lover.

We boated back to our launch point maybe 30 minutes away. They had fresh cut pineapple as part of their snack offering. I have decided that fresh pineapple lightly seasoned with salt-watery hands and mouth and air, after 90 minutes of brilliant snorkeling, is among the best flavors there is.

We all washed the saltwater off and headed to Reel Aloha Poke (which our nav system hilariously pronounced “poke” like you would do to someone’s shoulder if you were trying to get their attention). The selection wasn’t vast but it was unique, especially their side dishes, and everything we tried was super fresh and flavorful. For example, I had as my sides a pickled ogo salad, whose primary ingredient was a fine-branched brownish purple seaweed. Sean and I both tried the Ho’io salad, made with a local fern. For Ian, Sean walked to a nearby McDonald’s and bought him a chicken sandwich instead. The rest of us loved our poke though.

We next drove to the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau national monument. Sean and I had been before, but we thought it would be good for the kids to understand that Hawaii, while being one of our fifty United States, has its own unique history and heritage. As I understand it, this is (or was) a place of intense mana or spiritual power because of the 23 chiefs whose bones were protected in the temple. This mana was available only to royalty and those who served them. (I looked it up, the bones were relocated in the 1800s, so I suppose the mana moved along with them.)

Additionally, this is place served as a sanctuary during wartimes. It was also a place of refuge for those who might break a kapu, or sacred law. Infractions might include a commoner casting a shadow on royalty or someone catching a fish out of season. The penalty for breaking kapu was death. If the criminal could outmaneuver their pursuers and make it to the Pu’uhonua, they might be absolved of their crimes by a priest. Evidently the law of kapu ended in 1819, but the site remains sacred to the Hawaiians.

I’m not sure how engaged Maya and Ian were. There was a game, called Konane, that involved black and white stones on a large stone playing surface. We didn’t take the time to learn the rules, but it looked like it could be interesting. We listened for while to what the different woven baskets on display were used for.

After this, we stopped by St Benedict’s Roman Catholic Church, the famous painted church. Maya and Ian did a great job of reigning in their normal loud and boisterous natures while they were in the church.

Everyone was oddly tired after all this, so we had some down time before heading out for an early dinner at Kona Brewing Co. Sean and I used to love a beer of theirs called “Koko Brown,” but it seemingly hasn’t been available in Austin in ages. We thought maybe in the Hawaiian islands, we’d find it available, but thus far, it hadn’t been seen in any of the establishments we visited – not at any grocery store or convenience store even. Surely if we went to the brewery itself it would be available, and sure enough, there it was on the menu!

Imagine our disappointment when they said they had run out a couple days prior and weren’t sure when it would be back in stock. Oh well.

After dinner, we had just enough time to get dressed in our swim things again and get to the meeting spot for our big event: nighttime snorkeling with manta rays!

Here’s how it works. The tour operator sets out a light board – a retrofitted surfboard with lights shining down from the bottom and handles all around its perimeter. Us intrepid snorkelers attached floats to our ankles (to avoid accidentally kicking the mantas), grabbed those handles with our hands and just laid on top of the water. With this setup, we very much limited our chances of accidentally touching the federally protected manta rays.

The light attracts the plankton and the rays gracefully swim by with their big mouths agape and scoop it up, gently flipping over as they do so to expose their undersides. Since they are federally protected, we of course we couldn’t touch them, but that they could touch us. I was brushed at least a couple times as the huge creatures swooped past.

We had been told that morning about a locally famous manta ray known as Big Bertha, whose wingspan is around 16 feet. We didn’t get to see her, but we saw probably eight other mantas (individually identifiable by their unique spot patterns) roughly half that size. I even had a little trouble with my mask leaking (I had to stop every few minutes and dump the water from it), and I still can’t be anything but thrilled with the experience with those huge and gentle sea creatures.

I was worried that Ian would be a little weirded out by the size of the manta rays swimming around him. Plus I was a little nervous that he’d bail a few minutes in like he had this morning. But nope, both kids stuck it out and by all accounts were just as thrilled as the grownups.

Day 11 – Punalu’u Black Sand Beach, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Today was our big Hawaii Volcanoes National Park day. To be fair, in 2008, when there was active eruption activity going on, visiting the park was a much different experience. At the time we visited in August of this year, there was no eruption happening, but we figured it was still worth a visit to see such a unique landscape.

We started our day with a small tide-us-over snack in our hotel room before heading out on the hour and twenty minute drive to our actual breakfast stop, Punalu’u Bake Shop. Sean, Maya, and I enjoyed malasadas and other sweet pastries. Ian had a bacon, egg, and toast breakfast plate that was more to his liking. We hung out in a pretty courtyard in a gazebo, watching another gold dust day gecko puttering around in its eaves.

Afterward, we headed to the Punalu’u Black Sand Beach. The sparkly black volcanic sand there was truly beautiful, but the part that I loved most was seeing the big green sea turtles.

We were sort of idly puttering around on the lava rocks along the beach, watching waves crash and crabs scuttle. Two beach dudes wandered by and told us to take our family a little further on – there was a turtle just hanging out eating. They even walked us over to where it was and showed us.

Sure enough, in the water right along the shore, a sea turtle was just happily sitting in the water, chomping away at algae and whatever else they chomp on. Its colors were so much more vibrant than the ones we saw in a roped off section of the beach. (They had the beach section roped off because the turtles are endangered and thus a protected species. You’re not allowed to touch or even approach them.)

After gazing at the turtles for a while and figuring out that we didn’t know how to capture that beautiful black sand sparkle in photos, we headed on into Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

We started by checking out the Kilauea Visitor’s Center, where Ian, who was filling a bit cold, almost immediately parked himself in front of Pele’s fireplace. Maya, who abhors the smell of fire, gave the fireplace a wide berth and went outside to look at the Halema’uma’u crater (the caldera of the Kilauea volcano), which honestly didn’t smell a whole lot better.

The caldera looks quite a bit different than when we last saw it in 2008. The big eruption in 2018 drained some 1 billion cubic yards of lava from within the volcano. The loss in pressure and structure allowed the summit to collapse. Signage at the Visitor’s Center said that Halema’uma’u crater sunk 1,600 feet down, which is particularly impressive given that Kilauea’s elevation is around 4,000 feet.

We started our exploration by letting the kids check out one of the steam vents. There’s a whole trail that takes you to additional vents, but the one right in the parking area suited us just fine as a novelty. Ground water seeps over magma-heated rocks, and it evaporates into steam. It was pretty brisk outside, but leaning over the steam vent, we’d be hit with little bursts of hot moist air, occasionally almost uncomfortably hot. It was pretty wild.

Next we visited the Thurston Lava Tube (known as Nahuku in Hawaiian). Lava carves a path through the landscape (as things do when they’re more than 2000 degrees Fahrenheit), but the slower moving exterior edges of the lava flow can harden and form a sort of crust. Eventually that crust builds up and joins at the top, creating a tube. Even after the lava drains away, the tube remains. And we could actually hike through the Thurston Lava Tube.

The dining options inside the park weren’t really thrilling us, so we drove to the nearby town of Volcano and ate at the Tuk Tuk Thai Food Truck instead. While there is no seating around the truck itself, the extremely nice lady working at the truck gave us directions to a park where we could sit and eat our lunch. The kids had hot and sour soup. We all shared some egg rolls, and Sean and I had a big steaming pile of pad kee mao (drunken noodles). It was such a delicious and soul warming treat.

After our late lunch, we decided to drive down Chain of Craters road. We wanted to show the kids the sea arch, and we wanted them to see how the road just ends because lava rock has overtaken it.

We parked the car and had a fine time taking a look at the Holei Sea Arch from the overlook. The lava rock is younger and more stark in this part of Hawaii, and it was interesting to see the beautiful deep blue water crash endlessly into the jagged black rock. Indeed, it was pointed out that the sea arch won’t last forever. With the constant attack of the ocean waves, it will eventually collapse too.

We started walking down the road to see where the lava rock crossed over. We walked till the black desolation stretched to either side of us and then walked some more. The kids spent some time clambering around the jagged fields of lava rock, admiring the different iridescent colors that shimmered in the sun.

The air temperature was not hot, maybe 85 degrees, but that sun is so incredibly direct that we were all cooking by this point. And that’s about when we noticed the sign advertising the evacuation route. Maybe as a result of the big 2018 eruption, the lava-blocked road had been cleared.

I had been wanting to walk the Kilauea Iki trail, but we were running out of time and energy. The sun sets pretty early here, and the restaurants don’t tend to linger late either. What’s cool about this trail though is that you get to hike down into a now dormant volcanic caldera. Kilauea Iki means “Little Kilauea” in Hawaiian, and that’s kinda what it looks like on the map – a little caldera to the east of the big Kilauea caldera. (Oh, and hey, I just saw in my trail guide that Kilauea means “spewing” in Hawaiian, which is what happened in Kilauea Iki in 1959.)

I wish we had more time to enjoy the trail, but what we did see what fascinating. Were we ever to find ourselves there again, I might make sure we had more time to do this hike properly. As it was, at 6p, the sun was rapidly dropping, and it was so late (not really) when we got back into town, that nothing was open except McDonalds.

Day 12 – Wandering, Last-minute Shopping, Heading Home

We actually took it relatively easy today. Sean and I (mostly Sean) packed our bags for the return trip that evening, and I wandered the kids down for one last swim in that glorious pool with its glorious slide.

Over the past several days, we kept seeing small brown creatures romping through the parking lot or poking around in the hotel lawns. They were squirrel-ish but much too large to be that and they moved differently too. We finally looked them up – they are mongooses! (Yes, that is the correct plural form.) They were introduced in the 1880s to help control rats in the sugarcane fields. That may have been well and good then, but now they are considered invasive. The problem is that they eat lots of other things too, including endangered birds and the eggs and hatchlings of endangered sea turtles.

After we loaded up the car and bid our hotel farewell, we headed north to try out Kohala Burger for lunch. I think only Sean had an actual burger, but regardless, the food was solid and service was nice and relaxed. For the first time during this giant long time in Hawaii, we had either Dole Whip (pineapple ice cream) or fancy drinks made with Dole Whip. I love that stuff, and outside of Disney World, the only place I’ve had it is in Hawaii.

On our way back south, we stopped to see the Pu’ukohola Heiau National Historic Site. A heiau is kind of a temple or place of worship. This particular heiau is one of the last to have been built (1790-91) before outside influences impacted traditional Hawaiian ways.

After learning about the social / political structure of the early Hawaiians, with the chiefs and priests and so on, and learning about people being put to death for breaking kapu, or for ruling land another chief wanted, and after seeing their various weaponry back at the Bishop Museum, Maya, while sitting under a shade tree at the Heiau site, said, “I’ll never think of Hawaiians as easygoing beach people again.”

Because we’d been so busy, we really didn’t manage to squeeze in much wandering and shopping since back on Oahu when we were hanging out in Chinatown. In the Waikaloa Village area, we stopped in at Reyn Spooner to search for proper Hawaiian shirts. It took a while to try everything on and make selections (I actually held out and found one I liked at Kahala instead, which I ordered after we were back home), so the kids were jonesing for a treat by then – one last shave ice, pleeeeeeeeese?

The nice fellow working at Reyn Spooner sent us over to Original Big Island Shave Ice Co. While the line for the place was lengthy, the texture of the shave ice was the best we’d had so far during this trip.

We took a little walk around the shopping center after this popping into stores as the urge hit us, buying a few little take-home treats here and there. Somewhere in our wandering, we saw a little display with different types of solidified lava and explanations for how it was formed. We saw the usual pahoehoe form that hardens from slow-flowing lava and looks (to me) like brownie batter. And there was the counterexample to the pahoehoe, a’a, which is loose and jaggedy and is created from faster moving flows. We also saw a terrifying thing called a volcanic bomb (which we had learned about yesterday as well during our Kilauea Iki hike). Globs of lava fly into the air and cool to solidification on the way back down. We saw one I hadn’t heard of before called Pele’s Hair. These are long strands that occur when lava is thrown into the air and stretched out by the wind.

On our way back down to Kailua Kona, we stopped in for one last long look at the weird dark black lava rock meets blue ocean water vistas around us. The kids chilled out in the car for a little whiel while we soaked up the last bit of Hawaii before we had to leave. We saw a few bikers come and go. Watched some folks who’d rented jeeps – probably to get to the top of Mauna Kea – take some photos and move on. And finally it was time for us to leave too. Sigh.

We filled up the rental car and headed back to the airport. The Kona airport is kind of an open air marvel. This is our second time through this airport, and I still wonder what happens if it rains. We were “late” in the evening, so of course it was hard to find food places that were open and when they were open, that hadn’t run out of food. We managed to get dinner in and get to our gate with plenty of time to spare.

It’s sort of a weird experience walking out across the tarmac to get to your airplane, but I like it (again, we haven’t encountered rain yet – might be different then). We boarded our plane, started to taxi out to the runway, and then sat and waited for what felt like forever. They let us know there was a medical situation and that over the Pacific Ocean wasn’t the best place for that to escalate, so they taxied back to the gate and we waited a while longer for a person or people to be escorted from the plane. And it sounded like there may have been some clean up required as well. From where we were sitting, the details were a little vague. Probably that’s a good thing.

As it was, by the time we left, we were probably two hours later than our original takeoff time. We were going to have had a 75 minute layover at LAX, but of course, that ship had sailed. However, on our Delta flight, we were able to use the onboard wifi for free (I can’t remember if this was available to all or if you had to be part of their frequent flier program), and so when our flight was irreparably delayed and we were definitely not making our connection, they rebooked us on the next available flight out of LAX and we simply had to confirm that change via their app. This all happened without us having to hustle to find a gate agent or desk agent who, in our past experience, have varying levels of interest in helping you.

We had plenty of time for breakfast, and so we did. And our flight from LAX to Austin went without a hitch. Our luggage made the flight change with us, so we were able to get home without further incident. And since we arrived home on a Saturday, we still had one more day to clean up and decompress a little before we started back to work.

We had an outstanding trip. Sean especially did a ton of planning, and other than suffering for not getting to do everything he had intended, I think the plan served us well. Were we to do another trip like this, rather than cramming three islands into just under two weeks, I think we’d visit no more than one island per week. The other thing we’d like to figure out is how to streamline our beach-going. The getting from car to ocean and from ocean to car wound up being a far lengthier process than it seemed like it should be. We’ve managed to extend the aloha a little longer by cooking some Hawaiian things, reading books set in Hawaii, and writing up these travel notes. The kids still grumble about the big hike, but they tell me they loved the trip too. It may not be Maine or Iceland, but I guess it’ll do.