🦃 🏖Da Big Island Turkey Holiday 🏝🦃

What’s better than eating Turkey on Thanksgiving Day and shopping until you drop on Black Friday?

Going to Hawai’i, of course.  And not just Hawai’i; it’s the Island of Hawai’i!

Yes, we’ve virtually visited all the Hawaiian islands…”Counties” for sure!

Technically speaking, we haven’t visited Kaho’olawe and Ni’ihau, but those 2 don’t allow anyone except with permit (Hawaiian blood and for cultural reason).  We also haven’t visited Lana’i and Molokai, but we did swim at the Lana’i harbor, so that sort of counted.  As for Molokai, there’s pretty much no sightseeing landmarks other than beaches, beaches and beaches, plus the north shores landslides area.  Well, so, not really for kids and not exciting enough for us until we are 70’s…and that’s what most traveling guide will tell you too!

While we were there, we took the Hele-on bus from KOH to Royal Kona Resort 

where we stayed and witnessed the preparation of a luau

and visited “a” Coffee Museum (we thought initially that this was Kona Coffee Museum but had high doubt; then we saw a lot of “Kona Coffee Store and Museum” to confirm that it’s just “a” - one of the local stores that sells coffee, and used to plant coffee, but nothing more really.)

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach park where a honu was resting…

Volcano House (and had lunch there) and Kilauea Crater (Thomas A. Jaggar Museum) where we saw actual lava coming out!!! 😱😱😱

Then we visited Thurston Lava Tube where Ma’e Ma’e kept asking me to check out if Energems were there (she ❤️ Power Rangers Dino Super Charge!)

 We then rode* over the Hilo where we visited Big Island Candies (oh yum!) with some customized Hello Kitty super expensive souvenirs and Waianueanue (Rainbow Falls).  We passed by Banyan Drive, but, since Banyan tree is so common in Hawaii, we didn’t even really notice it until the end of that 5 sec passed by (probably exciting for some 1st time visitor…)

*Cheapest currently via Reserve Hawaii to book Polynesian Adventure Circle Island & Volcano tour - kids for free for each adult ticket, and the adult ticket is discounted too, so we paid only 2 discounted adult tickets and got Keko'a and Ma'e Ma'e to go for free.  Otherwise, kids would have cost ~$55 each!

On our way back to Kailua-Kona, we had a stop at the Hamakua Nut Company where Ma’e Ma’e had a blast (she also ❤️ nuts, especially SPAM favored nuts!)

We did rent a vehicle for a couple of days, since there are many parts of the island where public transportation isn’t available…yet.  With our Nissan Note, we drove to Mauna Kea and stopped at the Visitor Information Station - that’s the highest place our vehicle could go (rental company rules, plus anywhere higher requires off road capabilities since roads are unpaved and in quite bad shape).  It’s COLD up there - 90ºF down at Kailua-Kona; around 45ºF up there in Mauna Kea VIS.

Funny thing was - I brought a jacket with me just for this particular use, and I utterly forgot to bring it with me that day 😳

We then visited Kealakeka Bay State Historical Park (outskirt) and saw from far away - Captin Cook Monument where he was KILLED, CHOPPED APART, COOKED, AND BURIED (well, that’s Hawaiian tradition for ya!)

After spending 15 minutes there, we drove on a 1 lane road (for both side of the traffic; if we have stopped inside the national park, walked to the JCM, then gotten back to the Hwy for our next destination, it would have been over an hour!) to Pu’uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park where both Keko’a and Ma’e Ma’e were frustrated and tired…remember, it’s 90ºF or even higher out there (and 45ºF up in VIS Mauna Kea)!

They were happy afterwards once they received their junior rangers badges for completing the tests over there though

And we saw another honu, again!

We had lunch at Sam Choy’s Kai Lanai, in which Frommer’s stated

“When they’re in top form, this aerie nominally run by renowned Honolulu chef Sam Choy is hard to beat.”  That’s so true because all the food was great, except the Saimin, in which it was saltier than sea water!  We gladly to have our $5 back from the restaurant.

Guess where we went afterwards?  Kona Public library!

Since RKH is on the waterfront, we ended the day with a nice sunset…

We then flew to Kaua’i and stayed at Aston Poipu Kai.  the resort wasn’t a very good experience since we specifically requested for 3rd floor and, we understood that this was just a request, the reception person actually told us that “yes, it’s 3rd floor” when we asked him 2 TIMES about it…then we drove to the unit and unloaded everything, and found that we were in the 1st FLOOR!  We then had to call the reception desk, packed all our things, and again, asked and told “yes, it’s the 3rd floor” of another building, only to find out that it’s the 2nd.  Oh boy, we were just too tired to redo everything again.  3rd floor was due to the fact that we were hoping to see the water from the Resort…

Anyhow, the hotel package came with car rental, so we drove to Russian Fort Elizabeth State Historical Park - nothing but rubbles and a stone wall now, with a flag pole from 200 hundreds year ago.  It’s raining (light drizzle) so we had to take our image quickly.

We then drove to Wimea Canyon State Park - all the way to the end of the road too, but it was too cloudy/rainy to see anything there.  Fortunately, sky was clear over at the lower portion of Waimea Canyon lookout, where we actually stopped by first.

We also stopped by at the Kokee Lodge just to check things out - nothing much to see really…

And on our way back to Po’ipu, we stopped by at the Captain Cook Monument, the place where he stopped by before he was butchered when going “back” to da Big Island.

Kaua’i Coffee Company was a landmark where we spent almost 45 minutes on our way back.  This was also the place where Ma’e Ma’e had her first “pretended” taste of Coffee.

Frankly, I tried their coffee, and I didn’t really like them (100% - not strong enough).  They are ok as a breakfast coffee, I guess, but definitely much better when blended with other favors like Vanilla or Macadamia nuts .  Same can even be said with Kona Coffee too.  That’s my own opinion, of course.

We visited Smith Boats harbor the next day where the boat would take you to Fern Grotto (we didn’t go as it’s now “looking” only without walking into the cave).  

We then drove to Shops at Kukui’ula where kids had Lappert’s ice-cream (pretended-they actually wanted shave ice, which we got later at Brennecke Deli at Po’ipu beach).  We actually tried the Bubba’s burger and again, it sounded special, but it really wasn’t once you’ve tried “good” burgers before (it’s more like, a B-graded burger, where IN-&-OUT is a C, BK is a D, and M is a E).

We ended the day by visiting Po’ipu Beach - not swimming yet - and looked at the sunset.

Too bad that it was too hazy for both sunsets - in Kailiua-Kona and Po'ipu, as you can see from the images.

We went there the next day - to swim and snorkle this time - and saw - again - honu and seal!  Unfortunately, because of the seal, we weren't allowed to reach the island...2x unfortunately - that sand bar to the island "seemed" to be washed away at the moment, as it'd been under water for 2 days while we were at the beach.

Before we had lunch, we had a quick drop by at the Koloa Public library, and now we can say that we have been to 3 island libraries (except Oah’u).  Keko'a didn't like this one or the Kona library; he said that there were too few comic and Garfield books  He loved Kihei's one the best, followed closely by Lahaina...and that's why we're moving to Maui.

We ended our final day at Kaua’i by visiting Spouting Horn again (we went there in Feb).  The waves were much larger this time as there was strong wind during our entire stay, and we even saw a chicken resting on a tree - that’s a 1st for all of us to see.

We tried the happy hour time at Keoki’s Paradis, and this place lives up to its name.  Food was expensive here, so we could only afford its HH in which everything “offered” was under $10 ($5-8).  Even that was delicious.  And we bought some Kei’ki T-shirt too as it was having a 50% off sale so each one cost $5 (adults were more like $13-16 after the discount, but I wanted a long sleeve of a particular logo which it was sold out, and the rests weren’t that nice looking).

We were so hoping to catch the Mo’ana plane on our way back to the mainland, but it wasn’t meant to be 😞

San Francisco was nice even with the X’mas decoration, but still nothing compare to paradise.  Oah’u here we come (then Maui, here we’ll be moving to!)

Now this was a great 7 days vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday 👍