Water Fun on the Kona Coast

Kona has a few great options for water fun - tiny White Sands Beach for boogie boarding or snorkeling at Kahaluu Beach Park, which is very popular and may require an early start to get a spot. If we opt for these DIY adventures, we might want to pick up Banh Mi in town at Ba-Le Sandwich Shop, before we hit the beach. Another from land option is further south near the place of refuge, called two-step beach.

From what I've read, there are quite few more snorkel options if you boat to the snorkel location. The Kealakekua Bay is supposedly awesome and full of fish, but only one company seems to go there daily and the boat is motorized and their website annoys me. Plus I don't know that we will want to go on another tour. The plus side to touring though is we don't have to pack our own gear, BYOGear would likely mean no carry-on luggage option for the flight.

Kayaking also seems like a super fun option. Aloha Kayak offers tours of Keahou Bay or the City of Refuge. These include lava tubes and caves as well as snorkel stops. Again this is another tour, but perhaps a bit more independent and no gear required.

Also intriguing are the night time Manta Ray snorkels. Hmm. That sounds rather unique, but how do you see at night and how close do the rays come? I know they aren't sting rays, but I worry a little since the death of the crocodile hunter. Yet, I don't want to pass up an opportunity to see something cool. It seems like several companies offer the night time snorkels at varying prices, but I can't tell if in the end you are going with the same dive shop on all of them. Kona Honu Divers is currently offering a package that you can use at different times, which includes both an evening manta ray snorkel and a morning dolphin snorkel. But this package doesn't time out as well as I'd like with our time in Kona.

Birding the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge

The Big Island is one of the best for birding and we are not going to miss out! We have scheduled a tour in to the refuge with Hawaii Forest and Trail. The refuge is only accessible with a special permit and 4x4 vehicle. We are going with a naturalist to help us identify some of Hawaii's endemic birds. Endemic birds are those that are only found in one geography, so Hawaii's endemics are only found in the Hawaiian Islands and most are endangered.

This trip is going to be pretty hardcore. We meet at 6 am and drive 3 hours into the mountain, to go on a 4 hour jungle hike. I couldn't be more excited.

This is a map of where we are going:


This will not be the first trip of this type that we have arranged while traveling, but frustratingly the other 2 we have arranged were cancelled and we were left to bird on our own. We saw some birds, but never anything as good as what we can see on a trip like this. SO. This time I've got a plan B in place, I've been in contact with a local naturalist who can at least take us near the site if the trip falls through.

Kailua-Kona

We spend our first 3 nights just south of Kailua-Kona.

This area is the main population center of the island. We probably won't spend a lot of time in this town except when we arrive we will do our shopping here and may have dinner or lunch on occasion. We'll be in a condo, so we'll want to pick up some groceries in town. There's a costco! And safeway of course. And i think a farmer's market.

Here's a cute little map of the centro:


Thoughts about how to spend our first day:
Arrive around noon, get the rental car, get lunch at Kona Brewing Co inside the North Kona Shopping Center on the map. We'll need to do some grocery shopping, then check into hotel.

We will probably want to walk around town a bit. The brewery has a tour at 3pm. The fishermen return to the pier at 4pm.

Doug's comments on Kona town:
Kitschy, but worth walking around and seeing palace, Royal Kona Resort is a good place to grab a mai tai on the deck. Huggo's is good for seafood at sunset.

Guidebook's comments on Kona town:
Try to see Hulihee Palace (free hawaiian concert here on Aug 22, go back?), Moku'aikaua Church, and the Ahu'ena Heiau. See palace and church right.

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This map shows where the Sea Village is at (to the left of the circled one), just south of the town on Ali'i Drive in between a bunch of other resorts:

Big Island Anniversary

This summer we spend nearly 10 days on the Big Island. 10 days to celebrate our 10th anniversary!! Hmm. Hopefully we can take off 15 for the 15th.