Aloha! Part 1

Aloha, we just spent a few days in Hawaii on a “business” trip for the CFO.  She was going there to present at a conference and I figured that I might as well tag along.  It isn’t every day that a trip to Hawaii presents itself.  We visited the “big island” on this trip and now I really want to go visit some of the other islands so that I can compare them to each other.  I have heard that they are all a little bit different.  Having never been there before, I had visions of lush tropical rain forests, sandy beaches, big surfable waves and golden skinned locals hanging floral leis around your neck as you exited the plane.

When our plane landed on the runway, we were immediately greeted by something unexpected… a barren landscape of black lava rock.  Come to find out, the big island is the youngest of the Hawaiian islands and it is still growing.  Active lava flows add to the island every year and there are a lot of areas where the rock has not weathered and broken down enough for plants to be able to take hold.  It definitely wasn’t the green scene that I was expecting.  Nor were there  beautiful locals handing out leis outside the plane.  If you wanted a lei, there was a vending machine inside the "airport" from which you could purchase one.  By "airport" I mean a cluster of shelters without walls, not a real building.  This definitely wasn’t the beginning that I was anticipating.

 The "airport"

This big island is big, larger than the state of Connecticut (which isn’t really saying much, but you get the idea). There is a highway that circles around the outside of the island and if you drove the entire loop, you would cover over 300 miles.   (I put almost 600 miles on our rental car while we where there) There are numerous mountains that fill the center of the island and they limit the number of roads that cut across the island.  Two of the peaks on the island are over 13,000 ft. above sea level! (for reference, Mt. St. Helens is only 8,365 ft. tall)  I expected those two peaks to loom over the island, but unfortunately it was hazy every day and we never got a clear day where we could really see them.  There is an observatory with telescopes on top of one of them, but the CFO didn’t seem too excited about visiting there, so we didn’t go.  Maybe next time.  We stayed on the southwest side of the island, outside of the town Kona (home of the Ironman Triathalon).

Our "partial" ocean view room...  that tiny blue sliver between the building and the trees counts as a partial view!

I was able to keep myself occupied while the CFO was conferencing and we still had time to do some exploring together after the conference.  One afternoon we were able to squeezed in 9 holes of golf at the Kona Country Club that encircled our hotel’s property.  It was a little pricey, but it was cool to play golf 30 feet away from the ocean.  (I’m 99% sure that she had more fun driving the cart than actually playing golf)  I had some nice shots on the short par 3 holes and we managed to play all nine without losing a ball.  Finishing a round of golf with the same number of balls that you started with is a win in my book.

Someone please tell her that having a number painted on the side doesn't make it a race car.

Lava, fairways and the ocean... can it get better than that?

We also went horseback riding down in the Waipi’o Valley, which was on the northwest side of the island, about 2 hours away from our hotel.  The valley is surrounded by 1,000’-2,000’ tall cliffs and there is only one way down to the valley floor, a 0.6 mile long road that drops down 1000 feet, sometimes at a 45 degree angle.  Due to the limited access, there are only about 50 residents that called the valley floor home.

The valley below.

 

Our tour guide loaded us all into a van with four wheel drive and said, “no seat belts and leave the sliding door open.”  We all were a bit confused by that, until he followed up with “if the brakes go out on the way down, you’ll have to jump out of the van.”  Oh, great.  The van crept down the slope in first gear and shortly thereafter we pulled up to the stables for a short horse “control” 101 class.  This is what makes me a bit nervous about horses; they are big and smart, which isn't a good combination when I’m supposed to exert control over them. 

They started assigning us our horses and, wouldn’t you know, I get the horse named “Wacko.”  Not an encouraging name for someone who has almost no experience on a horse… Why couldn’t I get one named Sweetie Pie or Sugar? The CFO’s horse was “Jesse,” not nearly as threatening as Wacko.  (the more I thought about it after the trip, I think that if I ever ran a company that did horseback riding tours, I would probably give all the horses crazy names, just to freak out the tourists…  with that in mind, Wacko wasn’t so bad) 

Wacko and Jesse

The horseback ride was about 1.5 hours and we weaved through the valley gazing up at the cliffs towering above us.  Unfortunately, it hadn’t rained much recently, so there weren’t many waterfalls to see.  We were told that after a good rain, hundreds of waterfalls cascade off the cliffs and down into the valley.  There were several streams in the valley and we didn't just ride across them, we actually rode up several of them, one of which was so deep that it came up to my horse’s chest.  This deep water excursion soaked my shoes, but it was entertaining none the less.  After finishing the tour, we all piled back into the van and prayed that it would make it back up the road.  We passed several people walking up the road and I wasn’t really interested in joining them. 

Wacko went a wading...

Views from the valley

 

 

To be continued...