My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 4

And so, on to Hawaii, the "Big Island"! We stayed at a beach resort hotel there, and I liked it a lot. It didn't have a swimming beach, being rocky rather than sandy, but the views, including the view from our room, were terrific (as the sunset picture a posted a few days ago attests). You could also sometimes see turtles out on the rocks. Here's another picture. I think I took this one from our balcony:



There are also some old ruins out there that the resort is working on restoring. From what I saw (from my admittedly tourist's-eye view), there's a very strong interest in preserving and sharing traditional Hawaiian culture in modern Hawaii, which is good to see.

One of the things I really liked about this place is that the lobby, the bar, the dining area, and practically everything else was as open-air as possible. (This was true to a lesser extent of a lot of other places, too, including, most startlingly, the Kona airport.) The temperature in Hawaii, it seems, is so nice, and so consistent, that you don't even need walls. So you could just sit there in the bar enjoying the breeze and watching the tide come in two feet away. It was so pleasant, I didn't even mind when a bird flew in at breakfast and stole some of my scrambled eggs.

I'm honestly having trouble remembering exactly what we did on the Big Island when, but the date on my photos suggests that the first day we got there was when we stopped at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, or the Place of Refuge, a historically important site in traditional Hawaiian culture. This is where people who had broken the law or who were refugees from war could come to seek sanctuary and receive absolution from the priests. (Although I admit I'm probably simplifying that horribly. My knowledge of Hawaiian history is still sadly sketchy.) Among other things, there were very impressive carved wooden statues, which you unfortunately can't really see all that well here, because the lighting isn't great. Still kind of striking, though: