World Travel with Bob: Hawaii

We just returned from a week stay visiting Kauai and the Big Island. We ran into mixed weather, rain during much of our stay in Kauai and generally warm humid Spring weather on the Kohala coast of Hawaii.

While on Kauai, we drove over to the Poipu Beach area and the Kauai Coffee Farm. If you haven't been to a coffee plantation before, Kauai Coffee has an accessible walking tour via concrete path. The tour can be self-guided or with a guide from the farm. At the end of the tour, you can taste several different coffees - both unflavored and flavored. We enjoyed the Polihale Sunset roast and purchased several bags to bring back to the mainland.

During one of our evenings, we attended the dinner luau at Smith's Tropical Paradise, in Kapaa. The luau starts with a shuttle that leads guests through the 30 acre tropical plantings and ends at the Imu pit oven, where a whole pig was being roasted underground. The buffet dinner included several salads, rice, macaroni and cheese, adobo chicken, kalua pork, teriyaki beef, fruits, dessert and an open bar. It was impossible to be hungry after this meal. After dinner, entertainment starts with different Polynesian dances. It was raining fairly heavy during the evening, but the dining and entertainment areas are under cover.

Just Follow the Path

Flowering Coffee Plant (the flowers have a
light Jasmine scent)

Flowers to Beans

Spouting Horn at Poipu

On to the Big Island

Exiting the Kona Airport by rental car, we were met with broad views of hardened lava flows on both sides of the highway. Along our drive to Hapuna Beach Hotel, the lava fields were interrupted by the resort areas of Waikoloa Beach and Mauna Lani.

Hapuna Beach Hotel is a luxury 249 room resort that has a beach area for water activities, several pools and a 6,875 yard golf course. The beach and ocean view as you enter the lobby is dramatic and gives you a quick understanding of the large hotel layout.

During our stay on the Big Island, we stopped at Donna's Cookies, in Paauilo. This bakery makes wonderful shortbread cookies by hand, using lots of butter. It's hard to believe that this little shop bakes 12,000 cookies a day and delivers them throughout the island. The bakery doesn't ship to the mainland - though there was one exception. Shortbread cookies were regularly ordered and sent to my 97 year old father in California. During previous Big Island visits with my parents, it was a must to include a return visit to Donna's Cookies.

We also made a lunch stop at Tex Drive-in for musubi and a couple of malasadas. The malasadas were pretty dense and the three of us were just able to eat one musubi each (spam or katsu) and share two malasadas.

After lunch, we joined a walking tour at the Hawaii Vanilla Company, one of the few locations in the United States producing vanilla. This entertaining tour led us through a growing area and ended with a serving of vanilla ice cream and vanilla laced coffee. If you get an opportunity, there is a tour that includes lunch at the farm. We heard lunch was very tasty but reservations are required - several days in advance.

The West Hawaii Veterans Cemetery is located near the Kona airport. On Tuesday morning, we had a short service to place my father's ashes in a columbarium on the cemetery grounds. It was moving observe the flag ceremony and to hear the 21 gun salute and a bugler playing taps.

On our last full day on the Big Island, we took a short walk through the Malama Petroglyphs. This area is surrounded by Waikoloa Beach resort hotels and condominiums, golf course and retail stores. Setting aside this tourist oriented location, it is terrific that the petroglyphs were spared from development. In the afternoon, it was time for a relaxing dip in one of the several pools at the Hapuna Beach Hotel.

If you're visiting the Kohala coast area on the Big Island, here are some dining considerations - in no particular order:

Tommy Bahama in Mauna Lani: great cocktail selections and entrees, but the key lime pie was pretty dense, resort pricing.
Meridia at the Hapuna Beach Hotel: a variety of dinner offerings, great views of the ocean, resort pricing.
Sansei Sushi, in the Queens Marketplace, in the Waikoloa Beach resort area: delicious sushi rolls, service was a bit slow, pricing was reasonable.
AlVicolo in Kawaihae: this was a new restaurant for us, we had reservations but still waited about 30 minutes to be seated, reasonable prices. I think the food and service at this restaurant will get better as kitchen and server experience increases. Servers were friendly and live entertainment (Jeordie Schekeryk) was enjoyable. Note that Cafe Pesto, a nearby restaurant in Kawaihae, is closing.
Copper Bar at the Mauna Kea Resort Hotel: we stopped for lunch here as it was near the our hotel and we wanted to see the hotel architecture and layout. The view of the beach area was terrific from our table and lunch prices were not too high.