We’d taken a ride to whale watching with a woman and her husband who’d come from Alaska a year earlier. Her husband was recovering from a stroke, and they drove for Uber as a tag team - he opened doors and smiled while she drove. We liked her and asked if they’d take us to the airport to catch our flight to the big island (technically the island of Hawai’i). Our travel from island to island is semi-geographical, moving south from Honolulu and O’ahu, but also in order of descending population, and the airports are a testament - in Kona the airport is barely roofed, with large areas under only the sun. Kauai will be even smaller.
Were staying in a hotel just south of Kailua-Kona, a slightly touristy city with a long road that winds along the coast, where waves crash into jagged rocks - not quite the same vibe as beach Maui. After our 23 minute flight (!?) we checked in and had some downtime, listening to a local musician play in our hotel bar and getting dinner at a restaurant called Huggos just down the road with beautiful ocean views. As we drank (Mai tai count: Kelsey 11, Jake 5), a couple next to us we’re looking at vacation homes. “I like that one,” the older man said to Kelsey. 9 million dollars. (“No, only 8.8”). He even bought Kelsey a drink, saying that we seemed like a nice young couple. They were also from Alaska.
The next morning we started our day by heading into the town of Kona to get coffee (obviously…because it’s Kona) and to plan out some more of our trip. We wandered around town until we found a place that did reservations that were reasonably priced and seemed relatively popular and made some bookings. We knew we would want to go snorkeling, so that was our first selection, but we had also seen signs for night snorkeling with manta rays, which seemed simultaneously really scary and really fun, so we decided to go for it (eek!). We also decided to plan some surfing lessons, but booked that through another company, so we scheduled it for the next morning.
After our walk through town we headed back to the hotel where we spent a leisurely afternoon by the pool (the waves are too big and there are rocks by the shore, so they don’t have ocean access, but their pools are right by the ocean which makes it almost as good). We had booked a Luau for the evening and we didn’t want to exhaust ourselves before a busy night. Before we knew it, though, it was time for the luau.
We sat next to some people from Kansas City (“MISSOURI,” they said, “not Kansas”), an older couple and their daughter heading back to her last semester in law school in Chicago. They mentioned LA when Jake said he was from California, and nodded in understanding when they heard there was a bit of a NorCal-SoCal rivalry. “Remember when we said we weren’t from the Kansas side of Kansas City?” They unburied a pig, we all ate, and the host cracked the occasional joke, mostly at the expense of Poi, a bland tasting sauce made from fermented taro root that seems like it’s the Hawaiian vegemite. Kelsey was particularly not a fan of some sort of salmon-salsa, but the pig was the star of the show. The dancing started after dark, with much distinctive yelling. The dancers were a group of 4 women and 4 men, who put on a number of dances from around the island region, particularly Tahiti. The final act was a fire dance, fast and furiously performed by a single man who seemed to be immune to the heat, though he did light his pants on fire a teeny bit at the beginning…
The host had just announced a brief “couples dance” (there is a looooot of that kind of thing going on here in Hawaii), when confusion struck. A man near the front of the audience had collapsed and needed medical assistance. The hotel staff rushed over, and an ambulance arrived within minutes, as the host tried to direct traffic and ensure the man who needed help (a local who worked with a Hula company and may have been a part of the show) was taken care of. He seemed to recover as he was gurney’d to the waiting ambulance, and a final slightly downbeat dance was performed as hotel staff began to pour ice from the now-empty trays of food. A scary moment and a strange dichotomy with the sounds of ukulele and the dancers.
As we mentioned above, we had planned surf lessons for the next morning, so we woke up bright and early and headed a few miles south to where we would meet the van. We were in a group with three other people who had traveled from Sweden, and were extremely nice (as everyone seems to be here). We were both nervous and not sure what to expect when it came to surfing, especially because the area where we ended up had a TON of people doing surf lessons to the point that there was a real fear that we would run into other people, but our fears ended up being more or less unfounded. Our surf instructors were good at keeping an eye out for the other groups and getting us in our own spaces. As far as surfing itself, IT. WAS. SO. FUN. Of course the girl from Sweden got up on her first try, but we started to catch on as the morning progressed and both ended up being able to catch a wave and stand up without assistance by the end of the two hour lesson. Well worth the price of admission.
