Big Island, Hawaii

Last updated on January 23, 2022

The San Francisco airport had a cool kid’s area with hands on displays about how tornados and sand dunes form. Very interesting for grown ups too! The flight to Kona had some mild turbulence which I am not a fan of, but passed quickly. San Francisco to Kona was a quick 5 hour flight which was spent watching movies, reading, Sy eating too many packets of Biscoff cookies and playing video games. I won a prize for guessing how many years of service our flight crew of six had with United. Answer: 125. Wow! I guessed 120.

We got our rental car and it just so happened to be the EXACT same car we got in California…the Dodge Caravan. Tip that Trey has mastered: always sign up to be a member of the car rental company that you are using. You get to skip the line as a preferred client. We probably saved 2 hours this time cashing in on that membership! 

A little Hawaiian geography because it was always confusing to me…The state of Hawaii is comprised of 137 volcanic islands spanning 1,500 miles. The state’s ocean coastline is consequently the fourth longest in the U.S. at about 750 miles. There are four main islands which include, from northwest to southeast, Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii, after which the state is named. It is often called the “Big Island” or “Hawaii Island” to avoid confusion with the state. Honolulu, the state capital, and Waikiki Beach are on Oahu. Hawaii is the most recent state to join the union (#50), which it did so on Trey’s birthday August 21, 1959 (not the 1959 bit; he is not that old).

As soon as you land here you know you are on a volcano or maybe another planet. The landscape is so different from home with very dark grey to black, rough rocks everywhere with patches of vegetation. There are some human-added plantings around roadways and hotels, but more interesting are the plants, grasses, and small scrubby trees that have set up in crevices in the rocks. There are road signs warning of wild donkeys and goats that might cross the road. So far we have only seen wild goats here and the rumor is that the donkeys were removed. The North/South road from the airport mostly runs in view of the ocean which is a beautiful blue contrast to the rocky surface of the land. Our condo is in Waimea, which is also called Kamuela by the official U.S. Post Office designation because there are Waimeas all over the state of Hawaii and it was getting confusing. This name is only used by the post office, not by locals or the local government. The condo is really great…huge, well appointed with all the kitchen appliances you could want, beach cart, chairs, towels, good location, kid bunk beds, comfortable master bed (a plus for the over-50 set!) and a welcome basket with Prosecco! 🙂 There is a series of ancient Hawaiian fishponds within jogging distance of the condo that Trey perused on the first day. They apparently still work to keep in fish.

We had dinner out the first night as grocery stores near here are closed on Sundays and the fridge was bare. Outdoor dining, live Hawaiian music, excellent smoothies and a nearby diner who we saw first hand “dine and ditch” were the excitement for the evening.

The first full day was spent at Hapuna Beach which had huge waves (photos do not do this justice) and great boogie boarding. Lifeguards regularly came on the loudspeaker to warn everyone about rip tides, rogue waves and high chances of spinal injuries (!) which we thought was a little overkill, but we found out later that the surf was really high that day and the water was much rougher than usual. The kids loved it and now every beach is being compared to the waves of the first day, and generally falling short. We bailed for the pool after the 7th person said they were stung by a man o’ war jelly fish. People were bringing pieces of it up on sticks to show the lifeguards. Eek!

The next day, we did one of our old favorites hikes to a black sand beach in the Pololu Valley (see Marin’s post). We hadn’t been here for a few years and it seems to be managed now by some slightly official looking forest service types at the top. They were nice and informative about the new burial mounds that were always known about, but were now being respected. The public is asked not to walk over them and to respect these areas (The last time we were here was about 4-5 years ago with the Mayhews and the Macleods and Dawn. Our combined 8 kids were playing fort, tag, swinging on large ropes hung from trees, and running up and down the large dirt mounds. I think we even had a picnic lunch here…oops).

It was an easy 15 minutes down a steep trail into the valley. It was less hot than usual with some welcome clouds in the sky. Usually this trail is baking hot with little shade. Also, there are many warnings about falling rocks, the cliff collapsing and not swimming at this beach due to rough surf and rip tides. This gives one pause, but it’s a very popular spot and if you use common sense it is very worth the trip. The water seemed calmer than normal and several groups of people were swimming in the shallow areas so, of course, we swam also. The beach is black sand, but has a lot of volcanic black rocks on the ground so everyone went in wearing their hiking boots. We did a short walk around the woodsy valley and past all the now very obvious man-made burial mounds (What did we think they were before?) and back up the steep climb to the top. Sadly there was no guy at the top selling ice cold fresh coconuts anymore. 

If you can’t tell, this is a really special place. The pic of Marin standing by herself on the rock beach above is a reenactment of a similar photo that we took 9 years ago. Time flies!

We stopped by Snorkel Bob’s near our condo and rented 5 sets of gear. They were super nice and helpful and had great recommendations for where to go this week to see some fish. Next stop, snorkeling at the old sugar plantation at Mahukona Beach Park. This was Sy’s first time snorkeling and once he got the mask tight enough, off he went. You had to enter down a ladder and into the water with some occasionally very big waves that threatened to knock you straight off. We held off on getting Griffin in here. It was a great spot to see a wide variety of fish (see Sy’s post for his perspective). I did hear from Griffin that he would like to know where it would be best for him to learn to “snork” and if I would “snork” with him. I have not corrected him yet because its just too cute. 

Last stop of the day for sunset (we tried to do this almost every night) was at Spencer Beach Park. It is a great little beach for kids with minimal surf and a small protected beach. There is a bit of a drop off a few feet in but kids >4yo can handle it. There was some kind of Hawaiian boat practice going on. It reminded me of the dragon boat races in Philadelphia.

We started the next day with a trip to Ocean Rider, Inc (if you were wondering who owns seahorse.com). This is a seahorse farm that is part of the Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park (HOST Park), a project that the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) founded in 1974. Like with most things money played a role in this project initially as the original mission was for research into the uses of deep ocean water in ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) for renewable energy production. The project involves pumping cold sea water from a depth of 3,000 feet up through a few large pipelines and, for three months in 1979, a small amount of electricity was generated. This wasn’t enough electricity to justify the investment so (to Hawaii’s credit) they switched the emphasis to aquaculture. There are now over 40 tenants that use this water to work with seahorses, abalone, lobsters, octopuses, and sea salt, to name a few.

We have visited the sea horse place a few times now and it never disappoints. They are doing great work here breeding and selling seahorses for the aquarium trade to help stop wild seahorses from being removed from reefs. They also had a small pool with a marine biologist who was there to answer any questions we had. We saw a large starfish eating his way around the pool and leaving sea urchin barb debris in his wake (more on the sea urchin to come later, cue ominous music). We saw endangered fish and the shell of a poisonous cone snail (scary organism, but it has a really cool shell). Griffin was very interested in everything, but also very selective in what he touched. Only a few things got a light pointer finger touch. Marin, Sy, mom and dad were able to hold seahorses very carefully. The kids were all excited to spend some of the travel money they got from family this Christmas in the gift shop on a seahorse note book, a seahorse pen and a seahorse hand operated fan with bubble attachment (happy to support this company any way that we can).

We then stopped at Wawaloli Beach Park. This is a small beach that is encircled by lava rock on one side making it look like one large man-made tide pool. This seemed like a great place to practice “snorking” and we saw a few fish and a lot of sea urchins. The kids are learning a lot of new vocabulary this trip and I initially thought Griffin was calling them “sea asians”. That morphed into “sea agents” which we have not had the heart to correct yet either. Sy did try to tell him once that it was urchins, but Griffin does not believe him so sea agents it is. Most of the tide pool is too shallow to really snorkel. You have to walk out carefully (slippery, smooth, rock bottom) to the deeper areas where we did snorkel and saw a few fish. It was an easy place to get used to masks and snorkels for kids. Big surf crashes on the rock wall, but only the really big ones bring any significant water into the pool. It was fun waiting by the rocks to get splashed by the crashing surf.

“Best lunch ever” was at the Food Court…shoyu poke, something delicious called chicken long rice which was rice noodle soup with a lot of ginger and a little chicken, and Marin’s all-time favorite, Kalua pork with rice. Everyone loved this and we polished it off very quickly. There is a great asian grocery store here with fun things like bananas in some kind of sauce in a jar, tuna spread in a jar and all kinds of unfamiliar chips. We bought a sampling of chips to try and all have been popular so far. 

We drove through Kona which had a cute shopping and restaurant area down by the big hotels. We ate our first shave ice of the trip from Gecko Girlz while watching a girl’s beach volleyball team practice. The kids were happy that their shave ice matched Trey’s mask.

Last stop for the day was the Old Kona Airport Beach which is really just a beach park on the site of the old Kona airport. The HUGE parking lot is the old runway. They have soccer fields, a roller hockey rink and other sports facilities here too. There is not much actual beach here, but a lot of tide pools to check out and a few small, very warm, waist deep pools that we hung out it. Several local families with small kids were here to play also. Trey went exploring on the rocks in his Keens and somehow stepped on a “sea agent” and got a bunch of spines stuck in his heel. After reading scary things on-line, like “respiratory failure, paralysis and death”, I bought a bottle of vinegar to soak his heel, then spent an hour trying to dig them out with a razor and tweezers with mild success. Fortunately, he is having no side effects and we hope they will work their way out with all the water soaking we expect in the next few weeks. 

The next day we visited the Kanaloa Octopus Farm in the same HOST park. This is highly recommended! It has a great informational tour (about an hour in total), but the highlight is that you get to spend a lot of time with the octopuses (octopi, octopuses…either one is correct). Their goal is to try to breed and raise baby octopuses which is apparently challenging as no one is 100% sure what the almost microscopic babies eat at various stages of their development. We spent most of the time interacting directly with the octopuses. We found one called Apollo who took a strong liking to Trey’s hands and arms and kept trying to drag him down into his underwater lair. We fed him some crab which he grabbed with one of his many limbs and immediately stuffed into his beak on his lower side. We were told octopi inject crabs with some kind of toxin that liquifies them and then they slurp the crab in and spit out the shells. In the photos. you can see the crab pieces right up next to his beak where I guess he was doing this.

They are kept in solitary containers except for mating as they will eat each other if given the chance. Despite being too scared to touch him, Griffin got a stuffed octopus at the end and named it Apollo. Marin was upset at some random woman who didn’t listen to instructions and pulled Apollo out of the water when she was scared that he was latching onto her hand too hard. Marin was in the process of saying, “Put him down into the water! You are just supposed to gently peel him off you!” when Apollo got mad at the momo and got the last word by squirting her twice with a strong stream of water from his siphon (a tube near his head that can squirt water up to 8 feet!). We had a bit of a quiet laugh after that!

That night we were kindly invited to dinner at the home of Rash Mia and his wife Belinda. Rash is an ultimate frisbee acquaintance from 20 years ago who Trey was put in touch with by Mel Proctor. It turns out that Trey may have reduced his dislocated shoulder at some tournament years ago. The Ultimate family tree has wide roots. Rash and Belinda have built an amazing retirement home on a hillside overlooking the ocean in the Kohola region of the Big Island. The kids played in the hot tub and pool and with their 2 young, fun dogs, Fiji and Java. A huge thank you to them for welcoming us into their home and being our tour guides for the mystery waterfall hike!

The highlight beach of the Big Island for us was Maniniowali Beach at Kua Bay. We went here two afternoons in a row as the surf, water, and sand were all awesome. The beach stays shallow for a long time into the water and there are no annoying rocks to trip you up. The kids played in the big waves for hours and we dug endless pits and moats, and made walls to protect the home base by holding back the relentless waves. We saw a mother whale and her calf swim by about 300 feet off shore. The baby breached and everyone on the shore cheered. We stayed for sunset the second night and got the amazing photo below of the setting sun outlining the clouds.

Lifeguards here warn about the tide taking you to the sides into the rocks. They also warn about large surf and if you are bogie boarding the biggest breaks, you should be using fins to make sure you stay on top to avoid being pummeled to the sand. Tips: It isn’t easy to drag a beach cart here. You should carry in and carry out as there are rocky areas you have to walk over and down to get to the beach. Like most beach parks, they have very basic bathrooms at the top by the parking and fairly warm outdoor showers on the way out to rinse off.

On our last full day here we joined Rash, Belinda, their son Ryan and his girlfriend Gabby and 2 of Rash’s friends, Marie and Laura, who now live on Cape Cod. He took us on a mystery hike to a series of waterfalls on the Hilo side of the island. This place was other worldly, but we were sworn to secrecy so no identifiers have been given to protect this place. It is an out and back hike about 3.5 miles round trip going up and back on a somewhat paved work road. There are several fantastic waterfalls with clear water and pools to jump into. There are some difficult rock climbing/scrambling parts to get into the water, but it was so worth it! The water was glacial run off cold, the kind where your body feels numb after a minute. Marin, Sy and Trey all jumped off the rock cliff into the pool below. You can see them jumping in the photos below.

After the hike, we had a lovely lunch with everyone at the Hilo farmer’s market. Trey and I shared another shoyo poke bowl with some side salads and a chicken, rice, vegetable dish from the Thai truck. The kids shared more Kalua pork, rice, fries, a cheeseburger and giant açaí bowls with tons of fruit on top. We rolled out of there and made a quick stop at Laupahoehoe Point, the site of a moving memorial to some school children and teachers who were swept away by a tsunami in 1946. We made a quick stop to Tex Drive-In for malasadas. If you haven’t had these before they are Portuguese fried dough and they are so not glorified donuts. These are definitely the best on the big island in our opinion.

Our first disappointment of the trip… our scheduled Manta Ray Night snorkeling adventure was canceled due to the high swells from the Tonga underwater volcanic eruption. We had chosen the eco-friendly, native Hawaiian company that takes out 2 connected canoes. They didn’t think it was safe to take the kids on it with such variable swells coming in…so we stopped for sunset at a nearby beach where some beach volleyball players loaned our kids a ball. They hit around with Trey until dark and then we went home to start packing up for our 35 minute flight to Maui.

Itinerary change!

When we were planning our route for this trip, we initially had in mind New Zealand and Australia after Hawaii, but due to Covid those were crossed off the list ages ago. We were hoping Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam would open this month, but they did not. We had not booked anything after Hawaii until Feb 28th (Tanzania) because we were not sure what would be open in Asia for us to hop over to on the way to Tanzania. Thailand was most recently our next stop, but after difficulty finding bearable flights there, the specific rules around the “Phuket Sandbox” (their pseudo-quarantine way of getting tourists into Phuket) and trouble getting anywhere west of Thailand towards Tanzania, we made the sad decision to cancel Asia all together for this trip. We also made the invaluable decision to enlist the assistance of a travel agent, our ultimate frisbee friend Karen Baker (kkstravelservices.com), to help with our new itinerary. While we intended to actually go all the way around the world, we are now back tracking through Seattle to Cairo. Our new plan is 2 weeks in Egypt, 2 weeks in Sri Lanka and then on to Tanzania.

Our spring months are also coming together as we have 2 families joining us in Ecuador (Mayhews!) and in Colombia (My sister Vicki, her husband Matt, and cousins Lakkel and Meilia!). Details still TBD.

The other thing that has become apparent is that traveling is exhausting for kids. In our 4th week now, Trey and I are doing fine and feeling energized by the adventure. The kids have been doing a great job with their school work in the early AMs, but at different points during each day some child is whining or tired or asleep in the car (usually Sy who can just put his head down and fall asleep wherever). Sy said today that he wants a break from vacation. We need more down time for them to chill out and do nothing. Playing at the beach to me is downtime, but they are go, go, go the whole time and are tired. We plan to add in some literally “do nothing” days and to make sure that after our epic flights we have some quality down time when we arrive to adjust to the jet lag. As my mom always says to me, “you can’t burn the candle at both ends”!