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Satellite view © Digital Globe and Google, showing the road that we traveled along, from Kona to Waikoloa. |
Monday, 5 March, we fly to the
Big
Island of Hawai‘i and drive
to our hotel
in Waikoloa Beach
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Fortunately, our flight was not too early in the morning, so we could take it relatively easy getting to the Honolulu airport. The flight and picking up our rental car in Kona presented few problems. Then a half-hour’s drive to Waikoloa Beach, roughly in a north-east direction along the coast. Much of the terrain is relatively fresh lava flows, those are the black areas in the satellite map at the top. As you see in the pictures to the right, it’s just coastal plain, completely flat. And very desolate, even where there is vegetation. But this is the dry side of the Big Island, and all that’s necessary for lushness is water and fertilizer. The two pictures were taken a few seconds apart, the first one (big image, small) out the side window, the second one (big image, small) out the front.
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We turned left, northwest, off State Route 19, the Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway, onto Waikoloa Beach Drive, and into the Waikoloa Beach Resort. All Elegant. I thought the same of the Marriott Waikoloa Beach Resort, but Mark tells me that the Hilton was even more so. In the upper-left image to the left, you can see the sight that presented itself to us as we checked in (big image, small). As we walked forward, we could see more of the resorty area outside, pool and all (big image, small). You get a fuller idea in the thumbnail below them, showing the dining-area on the lower level (big image, small).
Down the elevator and to our room we took all our bags—and there were a lot of them, especially including the full-size too-big-to-carry-on bilious-red-purple suitcase filled with camera appurtenances as well as the swim fins that I never actually used and our walking sticks and all sorts of other Stuff. This naturally included a lot of dirty laundry, from Thursday through Sunday’s miscellaneous adventures. First we had our lunch in the restaurant you see to the left, and it’s a fairly elegant place. It was already rather late, since we had arrived and checked in well after noon, and we weren’t in the mood to go looking for food elsewhere.
But after lunch the first item of business was to find a laundry room. Especially after we had looked at the cost of having the hotel do our stuff. For the price of one shirt-laundering, we could do all our dirty duds in the very convenient coin laundry not far from our room. And so we did, spending pretty much the rest of the afternoon at this task.
After laundry, we walked across the Drive to King’s Shops, calls itself a “shopping oasis” but it’s just a high-class strip mall with the strip rolled up into separate parking areas. We chose to go to the Eddie Aikau Restaurant, also Elegant. We both had a macadamia-crusted ono, and the best part of it was the crust. The fish was cooked hard and tough, and we had to leave half behind, it was so excessive in quantity. “Very unsatisfying”, says my journal. We left and found a comparatively unpretentious coffee-shop around the corner, and the Kona coffee I got there was well enjoyed. And then to bed.