Day 8 - Hawaii - The Big Island

We had an early start so got a taxi to the airport. Our flight to Hawaii ran smoothly and when we eventually landed in Honolulu we then had to go to the internal terminal and get a flight to Kona on the Big Island. The flight was short and was in a small plane and we had some fantastic views of the islands below during the flight. The volcanous islands and sandy islands were spread across the Pacific Ocean. Once arriving at Kona airport we walked into the roofless terminal where the baggage carousel was under a Bali hut styled roof! We then went over to the car hire area to pick up our Jeep Wrangler 4x4 that we would use to explore the island. It was a straight forward drive to the hotel other than the fact that it was hard to watch the road when there were so many amazing sights from every window! When we got to the hotel we were astonished at how beautiful it was and at the fantastic location that it was in. It was a large white hotel with a sweeping drive up to the 1st floor reception area. When you walked into the reception it was all open and there was huge floor to ceiling windows looking out over the Pacific on one side and the other looked out onto the hotel pools and the lava rocks below. We went to our room and found we had views out over the tennis court, gardens and sea. We wandered around the hotel and found a path that takes you from the hotel spa to the sea in front weaving over the lava formed rocks.

That evening we drove into the main town for a meal and a look at what we would do the next day. The main town is a beautiful sea-side town that has little tourist shops, markets and restaurants and curves round forming a bay with little sandy beaches. It is one of the most beautiful places and it wasn't crammed with tourists so it was nice to feel like we weren't in some artificially created town.