Kona Hawaii

morning cofee on lanai

sea turtle in front of condo

It seems like just a few days since we were enjoying the shores of Lake Oconee. Barb and I usually try to spread out our adventures but a promo to Kona by Alaska Air made this trip very doable now. We landed in Kona on Wednesday and we were glad that the tour books had warned us not to judge the Big Island by the topography around the airport. We landed on lava beds amid sparse and dried up vegetation reminiscent of some of the volcanic areas in central WA. After renting a Jeep we drove the few miles into Kona. Our condo (through our time share plan) sits 30 yards from the rocky (lava) beach with a small sand beach down the way. We don’t want to move from this place but we were told that this unit is temporary; we need to move Saturday to a condo in the same complex.



We have enjoyed the primordial sound of the waves as they permeate our condo, even our bedroom, and the reintroduction to tropical fruit. If you have eaten a CA strawberry, picked green, ripened during shipment and compared it to a strawberry that you have picked from the vine, then you can imagine how the bananas and pineapples taste here. They are a bouquet to the mouth. Add to that our revisiting the fruit that we grew to love when we lived in Thailand, the mangos, the papaya, the “hairy strawberry” the rambutan, all available at the local farmers’ market just a mile away. Barb and I also try to save by “cooking in”. Yesterday we visited the local fish market and bought mahi mahi and some ahi. I grilled the mahi mahi last night and it was scrumptious. Our intense exploration of the Big Island begins today. So many beaches and an active volcano, and so little time.

from condo lanai, sunset as cruise ship departs

roads to the sites are often rough

ancient hawaiian road through a lava field