Today is Wednesday Feb 8th on the big island. I’ve been meaning to write this sooner, but by the time I get to the end of my days I’ve been so tired I’ve just gone to bed.
Friday Feb 3rd: In The Air
We left early in the morning on Friday Feb 3rd and took 3 very long flights to get to the Big Island in Hawaii. We flew all day from Pierson Toronto Airport to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Atlanta, and Atlanta to the airport in Kona Hawaii.
We got into our first place at Castle Kona at about 3:40AM. It’s a good thing that we were only staying there for the night because the place was falling apart. The actual building seemed alright, but our room was fairly lack luster and actually falling apart. The only redeeming quality about the room was the view. it was quite spectacular and right on the water.
Saturday Feb 4th: Arrival at Kona Makai
In the morning, we went out for breakfast and mimosas! 
Afterwards, we drove around through town to familiarize ourselves with the area. We walked the shops, and visited the local market to kill time before we could check into our second place: Kona Makai. Also, we made sure to try some scandinavian shaved ice which came highly recommended by our neighbour.
As it turns out, Kona Makai was only about 5 min down the road from Castle Kona. Kona Makai was a breath of fresh air! The grounds are immaculate, and our unit was roomy, clean, and tastefully decorated. Although the view from our lanai isn’t as good as our room in Castle Kona, I can see the ocean from my bedroom window! The couple that owns the unit we are staying in left us some helpful tips for exploring the beaches as well as some other things we may need. We found some boogie boards and snorkel equipment in our closets! Nita, one of the owners, I would presume, even competed in some Iron Man competitions! We saw where they were held when we were in town the day before. Needless to say, I was very happy we would be staying here for about a week.
Sunday Feb 5th: Beach Hopping
We spent the first full day at Kona Makai settling in. We went back to the market in town and well as Safeway to pick up some groceries. Since then, we seem to have visited Safeway almost every day (sometimes more than once a day). We never seem to leave there with everything we need and I’m surprised they don’t know us there yet.
For the rest of the day we drove north to scope out some beaches we’d possibly like to do some body surfing at. As it turns out, the term “beach” is relative. The black volcanic rock
that surrounds the island is beautiful, but not conducive to a day at the beach. We were fairly hard pressed to find beaches that
had good stretches of sand. When we found some that had small patches, it required navigating around rocks both in and out of the water. What I will say though, in comparison to my experience on Maui, the wavers were HUGE and in abundance.
Aside from getting our feet wet, we didn’t really go in the water, so, we finished our day with a dip in the pool and hot tub.
Monday Feb 6th: Lava Lava / Lava Java
We spent most of the morning shopping in town for goodies for our ourselves as well as friends back home. By now we were fairly familiar with all the shops on Ali’i. By lunch time, we had found everything on our lists for shopping and went back to Kona Makai to make lunch. After lunch, we went for a swim.
It having been my mothers birthday, my after had made dinner reservations at Lava Lava (Beach Club) which came highly
recommended as the best place to have dinner on the beach. Getting there, was a mission and a half. Particularly because we all had it in our heads that we were heading to a place called Lava
Java we’d seen in town several times before. So, right off the bat, we were sure we were heading in the wrong direction. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we left late to begin with. By the time we figured out that we were going to Lava Lava and we made it all the way there, we were very late for our reservation. Luckily, we were still able to get a table and the food there was AWESOME. However, we got there quite late so it was already getting dark and it was quite windy…. Side note: I also made friends with a local cat 🙂
Tuesday Feb 7th: Body Surfing & Cherry Blossoms
In the morning we visited our favourite beach and actually went body surfing. Navigating the rocks as well as the large waves seemed a daunting task (and was definitely a challenge). We ended up riding the larger waves towards shore well after they had crashed. It didn’t take long for me to find out I was out of practice when it came to body surfing. I started out the day with taking on a lot of (very salty) water. However, by the end of our outing, we were all catching waves and having fun.
For the remainder of the day, we traveled south to visit more beaches as well as the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms were located up on the mountain. As it turns out, it was fairly disappointing because the blossoms were not fully bloomed and there wasn’t actually that many trees. I would say we saw 20 max. However it was still a cool drive because we got to see up the mountain and the views were glorious. There were several instances as we were driving around where I had to stop and utter “wow” under my breath. It’s crazy how different it is up in the mountains. It’s like you’re out in the countryside. You would never guess that these places and the black rock beaches would be on the same island. One of the towns we went through was very western (like cowboy ranch western) and it just boggles my mind just how different even that was to some of these tropical towns.
Wednesday Feb 8th: South Point
Today we went for a long drive even farther south and beyond to Hilo. The original plan was to drive all the way to the bottom of the island and back. On the way there we visited Pu’ Uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park and we got to see a lot of cool carvings and structures.
Our next stop was South Point which was a breathtaking view of cliffs and water surrounded by open fields and rolling hills as far as the eye can see.
In search of food, on the way back we stopped at a local farm and saw some very strange looking ducks (that look like turkeys) and some parrots. We also, taste tested some locally grown coffee, honey, and chocolate covered macadamia nuts.
From there we were directed to Hilo (which was much farther than we had planned on going) for the closets restaurants. The drive to and from Hilo was amazing. Once again transported to a new world of lush rainforest and mountains. At one point we were actually driving in clouds. it was pretty wild.
More details, as well as photos and videos to come.
design work. I haven’t done this in a while so bare with me on my rambling.
much better in my head. My solution was to spend a bit of time away from it and look for inspiration. In fit, I found it in the rest of EMERGE. Since the website got such a good reaction from… well everyone, I decided to do page layouts inspired by the graphic they came up with for the side bar. I also found some inspiration in all the angles Miriam used in one of her posters.
tinagumba 