luau – The PolyBlog

Honeymoon recap 08 – Kona, Place of Refuge and boat cruise

February 3 2024

Day 8 in Hawaii started with a nice breakfast in “downtown” Kona. You can see the view from our simple hotel room, with distant cruise ships (I seem to recall they were leaving that day, not arriving), the pier going off to the left which is where we caught the lift to the submarine, a small lagoon sort of on the right halfway up which was for the hotel where the luau was, and then the back of the white and blue building to the left which is where we had breakfast, looking out over the ocean. If I recall correctly, somewhere slightly to the left is where the swimming portion starts for the Hawaii Ironman.

After breakfast, we headed South again, back towards where we went kayaking and snorkelling. There’s a site called the “Place of Refuge”, which has historical roots to people seeking political refuge there with a religious order taking care of them. However, while that in and of itself is noteworthy, I really just wanted to see the turtles.

Yes, turtles. When we were in Hilo, there were some sea turtles that swam around the bay by the hotel, which we had spotted while walking around. It seemed a bit surreal to me that these giant turtles just swam by. At the Place of Refuge, there are a lot of turtles nesting and mating in the area, so you can see them along the shore.

I know lots of people who have gone on African safaris, but I get excited just watching sea turtles. 🙂

For dinner, we drove a bit north to a small marina, and boarded a catamaran for a sunset dinner cruise. There were about 4-5 couples, I think, nothing big. And we chatted with the owners about the business. Like many in the Islands, they had originally gone to Hawaii on vacation, loved it, and eventually moved there. But, of course, they needed income, and so they decided to offer cruises. I found it a complete mystery to me, an area that I had never thought much about before, just assumed most people working in this area would “start fresh”. But just as the guy running the lava tube tour had “bought” the business, so too had this couple bought the boat and business together. Someone else started it and had it up and running, with a predictable cash flow, etc., and like any business, it could be sold to someone as a turnkey system. Which these people had done. I don’t know if they knew much about running a business like this, knew anything about boats, marine safety, weather conditions, etc.

But we had signed up for that day, so it obviously worked!

I don’t remember what we had for dinner, I remember some drinks and a bag of chips for snacks. I remember one of the other couples laying on a hammock strung across between the two runners of the catamaran. I have a vague recollection of the shape of the cabin, storage, a little kitchenette next to the helm.

But the big draw was the sunset on the water.

Part of me wishes we had a way better camera for that sunset. I think it was the first night I felt fully relaxed after the busy year up until and including the wedding. We had nowhere to be; nothing else we had to be doing. We were just chilling on a boat, sipping and noshing.

Honeymoon recap 07 – Snorkelling and luau

February 3 2024

Day 7 in Hawaii and up to this point, we had barely done stuff in the ocean yet. Sure, we went to the hot springs near Hilo on the first day, and were around the Ocean a lot (or under, if you count the submarine), but we hadn’t really swam properly yet in the full ocean.

We headed south of Kona to a place near the Captain Cook monument, rented some kayaks, and headed across a bay. Once there, we used a simple disposable underwater camera and went snorkelling.

This first photo of the monument is NOT, as you can tell, one of our photos — it’s one of our souvenir postcards. But it shows well the general view above the surface. We parked our kayaks over to the side, as did a lot of people.

As you can see from this next photo, the bay is a bit sheltered, but not completely. We kayaked from about where the sailboats are shown docked at the bottom.

Ah, the fine art of complex photography with water still on the cover.

But we did get some shots of some of the fish…

The bottom of the ocean wasn’t exactly alive with colour, not surprising given the depth and the fact that a LOT of people come snorkelling here. I had some problems with my snorkel, and ended up almost feeling like I was being pounded against the rocks by the shore. I was trying to fix it, and some passing tourist group was yelling at me to get off the rocks. I felt like telling them to “F*** off, I’m trying to drown myself”, but I didn’t. I wasn’t there by choice, that’s for sure.

Later that night, we went to a very tourist-friendly luau at a hotel on the beach in “downtown” Kona. Yeah, it was kitsch, but well, it was our honeymoon. It was a fixed price, with free cheap pineapple juice and rum drinks. You could probably have drank a bucketful and not felt any effect of the alcohol, but it was fun, and the buffet was good. Roasted pork from the pig-in-the-ground was the highlight, of course.

They put on a full show for the tourists, making it seem like they were honouring their ancestors, of course, as most locations do. As an aside, it’s a bit interesting that some of the performers that “lead” the show actually are training to be professional actors, and isn’t a whole lot different for employment than being a character at Disney. They do their “show”, which includes both interacting in character and the performance and then disappearing back to their regular life. The highlight of the night was the fireeater although I confess I liked the early hula dance training as they explained what the hand gestures represented (casting nets, catching fish, etc.).