Twotravel.bc: Big Island, Hawaii 2010

Beginning February 20 we stayed on the Big Island for two weeks. This was just the second time we have been to the Big Island. The first week we spent up in cowboy country at Paniolo Greens.

There was a grocery right around the corner so that was convenient. The resort is on a golf course and there was a nice clubhouse and pool.

We went to a small Baptist church for worship on Sunday morning.
We were entertained each morning by the turkeys outside our patio door.

We explored some places on the north side of the island since it was a closer drive. One was Laupahoehoe Point.

We went to the Hilo Farmer’s Market on Wednesday morning and bought some veggies and some Thai food. The phad thai and papaya salad were delicious. We even spoke in Thai to the lady selling and she was tickled that we had lived in Chiang Mai.

I love seeing the woven baskets.

We saw this statue of Kamehameha across from the harbor in Hilo.

The Liliuokalani Gardens was very beautiful as well as the harbor.

We went to two different macadamia nut farms one of which was Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa has 2,500 acres, approximately 250,000 trees and processes 35,000,000 raw macs each year. They had a factory viewing area set up with explanations and videos. The entire process was shown. We found that the cheapest place to purchase the nuts was at Long Drugs.

Waipio Lookout was a beauty. There is a canyon that can be explored with a 4-wheel drive or by horse back. We just took pictures from the lookout point.

The original statue of King Kamehameha I (1880) was up on the north end of the island. His birth date is unknown but thought to be around 1753 and he died in 1819.

Saturday morning the 27th we were to move to a resort down by Kona, but there was a tsunami warning and the low area was evacuated. We watched the live picture from Hilo harbor on the TV and got to see the water coming in and then receding. There was never a large wave but the water did come over some of the roads by the resorts in Kona. We checked out of our room and then just hung around the resort watching the TV and visiting until we finally went down to Kona after 6 pm. Of course our room was not ready at the Holua Resort because they couldn’t clean during the evacuation. It was about 7pm when we got into our condo. But it was well worth the wait. These building have an octagon shape and the condo was gorgeous.