Kona Big Island Hawaii Travel Report
I haven’t been to Hawaii since I was one and a half years old so my return in September 2016 was pretty well considered a long awaited first time that was a good nine months in planning. I chose to travel to specifically big island Hawaii because of the opportunity to scuba dive with manta rays which I wrote up about in a previous post. So I won’t get into any further details about the full two days of scuba diving I did while in Kona since you could read about it in my scuba diving with manta rays post which also includes video footage of manta ray dives.
Flying and Arriving In Kona Hawaii
Instead of flying from Toronto, I decided to fly from Buffalo, New York since my total taxes was only $37 rather than a much higher amount if I flew out of Canada. I did this through my Aeroplan airline points and of course for this great deal, I had to catch a 6 am flight out of Buffalo.
Instead of staying the night before in Buffalo, I had planned to sleep early at home and then drive into Buffalo at about 3 am to catch my flight. When that evening came, I just could not sleep no matter how hard I tried. By about midnight, I decided that since I was still alert, I better say goodbye to my two Lhasa Apso dogs Chester and Roxie and safely drive down to Buffalo.
I got to the border at about 1:30 am and tried to sleep for an hour in my car at the duty free parking lot … I was not successful at this. I then crossed the border and made it to the airport by about 3 am and tried to sleep there. Again, I was unsuccessful in getting any sleep.
Caught my flight out to and made a fast connection to through Washington Dulles to San Francisco where I had a five hour layover. I had planned to go into the city to meet up with my dive buddy Thomas and maybe have a clam chowder lunch but I emailed him to let him know that I chose to stay at the San Francisco airport to catch some sleep instead. The SFO airport has a yoga room which is quite dark so I thought that I would catch some sleep in there. I made my way there, grabbed a yogo mat and laid down. Since it was right next to departure gates, it was actually quite noisy and once again, I was not successful in getting any sleep.
The flight from SFO to Kona Hawaii was five hours long so I thought that I could finally sleep. As you guessed, I was not successful once more.
One thing I did not expect was that during the flight, we were handed special forms we had to fill out. These were much like customs entry forms but we were flying in from a US state to another. It was a form to declare any agricultural products we might be bringing in so we don’t contaminate the islands of Hawaii. In fact, we were told that if we were to bring in any pets like dogs or cats, they would actually be quarantined.
Thomas and I met up for this flight and we arrived in Kona about 7:30 pm local time. The Kona airport is small and is the first one that I have ever been in with outdoor departure gates and waiting areas. It was quite humid as my glasses immediately fogged up when I exited the plane. I thought that we would be greeted with Hawaiian girls putting leis on us but none were to be seen anywhere – I guess they don’t do that anymore or maybe only at big fancy resorts on Oahu and Maui. After getting our luggage, we caught the rental car shuttle to Avis where I reserved a car.
A rental car by the way is a necessity if one is to travel around the big island. Unless you are going to stay put in a Kona resort the entire week and take expensive bus tours, you will need a rental car to see the island on your own. Since there was only two of us, I changed the vehicle from a SUV on my original reservation to a Chev Cruze to save some money but as we’ll find out later, we could have used the SUV for its 4 wheel drive.
It was then a short ten minute drive into town on highway 19 and with the help of Google maps I had already printed, we were able to find the main streets to our hotel, Kona Tiki Hotel. This is a small 17 room boutique hotel right next to the ocean about five minutes south of the main Kona tourist area. However, it was quite affordable at just below $100 per night and included a nice breakfast. The rooms were comfortable but the sound of the waves crashing into the lava rocks outside were something one needed to adjust to for the first night. Here are shots of the view from my room as well as what was just outside my front door.
I would recommend staying at Kona Tiki Hotel for it’s location, prices and rooms. Just be warned that by their own claim, they have three more guest rooms than available parking spaces out in front where their tiny tight parking area is. We did have to double park one night and leave the key for management to move vehicles around as needed and exiting the lot onto the main road was tricky since most of the time we had to back out. Their website is pretty spartan too and you also have to send in a deposit in advance in order to reserve rooms.
The hotel is run by three different couples who each rotate living on site for four months at a time. Here are some cute birds who were interested in my breakfast each morning.
Avoiding The Kona Hawaii Tourist Traps
One of the things we wanted to do was to avoid the Kona Hawaii tourist traps in terms of both shopping and eating. We only ate at local restaurants within the Kona tourist area twice since both of these times were just upon our arrival and our last day in Hawaii before departure.
The rest of the time we asked the hotel staff where the locals like to eat. For Kona, we were recommended the Big Island Grill which was inexpensive and authentic. I think Anthony Bourdain actually ate here for one of his No Reservations episodes.
The Kona tourist area had the usual t-shirts, jewellery and souvenir shops which were not that interesting but there was a local wood carver who did catch my eye with his works. I did not buy anything as far as souvenirs go this trip since I’m cutting down on trinkets collecting and have too many t-shirts anyway.
During an afternoon break in between our scuba diving, we drove south on highway 11 to a Hawaiian cultural center called Pu’uhonua o Honaunau Historical Park which was $5 entry fee per car. Here is a shot from this site.
On our drive back to Kona along highway 11 near the village of Captain Cook, we stumbled upon a roadside vendor selling Hawaiian BBQ chicken and pork. We had a full combo dinner served in styrofoam takeout boxes for $12 and it was the best BBQ pork I’ve ever had. Here is the trailer they used for the BBQ.
We were definitely the only tourists here that we could tell. This was certainly not a tourist trap eatery. Too bad they were not located closer to the Kona tourist area as I’m sure they would be very popular. Maybe they were not allowed to because of competition from the tourist restaurants who might not want them there. We tried to locate this roadside Hawaiian BBQ another day but they did not show up at the spot we first found them at.
Back at the hotel, you can always tell which guests are the scuba divers as here is my scuba diving gear hung out to dry outside my room overnight. I was not worried about anything getting stolen at all in this boutique hotel. Even their entire reception area is wide open to the outside 24 hours per day without any problems.
North Coast Big Island Hawaii
After our scuba diving in Kona, we drove up north along highway 19 and then highway 270 to the north coast of the big island. Our hotel staff mentioned to us that it was a nice drive and that the north coast was definitely worth going to for its scenery. These highways are basically only one laners but traffic was very light so it was a pleasant drive. I was thinking back to my old pharmaceutical sales representative days that it must be nice to work in this area with such easy relaxed driving.
Indeed, we found at the north coast, a very dramatic rocky coastline almost like what I saw in Ireland or the Maritimes of Canada. The photo below as well as the top photo of this post shows this north coastline. There were a few other tourists who also drove here but not many.
We also found an isolated beach with lava rock and very rough waves. There were no tourists at all here and only a few locals who were fishing. It was quite obvious that most tourists did not bother to come to this particular place. Here are some shots of this very beautiful spot.
In the last photo, you can actually see one of the locals fishing there. After spending some moments at this beach, we drove down highway 250 which turned very lush with many green trees. As the road went higher in altitude, we started going through some mist and can feel the temperature cool down a bit.
After a while, the road started to go down in altitude again as we entered a valley to reconnect with highway 19 at a town called Waimea. From there, highway 19 headed east and back up the north coast of big island Hawaii. Our next stop was Akaka Falls, one of the bigger water falls on the island.
Akaka Falls is at the end of highway 220 which is just off highway 19 west of Hilo. Admission to Akaka Falls was $1 per person if we parked outside of their lot. Here is a shot of the falls
We spent maybe 30 minutes hiking to see the falls and by the time we were done, it was about 1 pm. We had left Kona at about 8:30 am in the morning so we were doing pretty good time as we saw what we wanted to see on the entire north coast in one morning.
After staying in Kona for three nights, our next overnight stay was in the town of Hilo. I will continue this travel report on the next post about Hilo Hawaii Travel Report.
