Driving down to Kailua-Kona for a more reasonable priced dinner than at the resort, we caught the sunset into the pacific ocean. It goes from sunset to total darkness in a matter of 45 minutes this close to the equator…
Well, we are settled into the Hilton Waikoloa Resort on the Big Island for 5 nights. We have just been relaxing for the past couple hours. Now we are headed out to dinner if we can find somplace not outrageously expensive…
What a surprise to see the terrain on the west shore of the big island in the area north of Kailua-Kona, the area of the Kona Coast. It is just a large barren area of old lava flows and a little scattered dry grass. We only found a little scrub brush in spots between Kailua-Kona and the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort, which is heavily landscaped and irrigated.
Our flight from Kauai to the Big Island got of to a good start, right on schedule.
This is our Boeing 737 that we flew to the Big Island on. It was a little more cramped than the 737 we flew from Cleveland to San Francisco. Aloha packs a couple more rows of seats on the plane, I guess.
This is the Kauai airport, which we heard is a relatively new structure, only about 10 years old or so…
This is a view of the northwest point of Oahu from the air, we had wanted to walk out to Kaena Point while we were on the island, but the brush fire had the road closed out to the point.
These ridges are on the western side of Oahu along the Farrington Highway. I think that may be “Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park” behind the ridge on the lower picture.
This is the very busy Honolulu International Airport from the taxiway out to the runway. We had a 45 minute stop in Honolulu to unload and pickup passengers and cargo.
Oh, and guess which island cruise ship was now in the Honolulu harbor? Hey, Steve, it’s the Pride of America, waiting for your November cruise!
And, we got one more look at Diamond Head as we headed for the big island.
We got a peek of the west end of Maui at the top of these two pictures (above and below) and it’s neighbor island to the south, Kahoolawe
We landed at Kona International Airport about 15 minutes later, and had to deplane down stairs, as this airport has no jetways for loading/unloading passengers at door level….
Boy, it sure would have been nice if our original AAA agent had known
more about Kaua’i. She said 1 day was enough because it was a small
island. Of course, if we hand not been so tired on Thursday, we would
have driven around more, and then some more on Friday after the island
flight. Sure glad we took that flight, though, as we saw much of the
island that we never would have seen by car.
I took the laptop down to the hotel lobby early this morning and loaded
pages from Thursday and Friday, and back dated each of them to their
respective date and time, so you may have to jump past a couple HipTop
messages to see them all.
We should be boarding shortly (half hour or so) for our flight to Kona
Airport on the Big Island.