Hawai'i - Part 2 - The Big Island - Kailua-Kona

OMG, WOW and all the other descriptive words I can't think of right now - what an amazing hotel Ant has found for us.It is called Outrigger Keauhou Beach Resort and it's right on the ocean front.

As it was too early for us to check in, we carried on up the coast to the main town of Kailua Kona which is about 7 miles away.It's quite a busy commercial town with lots of hotels, shops, restaurants and bars so it's nice that we are out of town with just 1 or 2 other resort hotels and a great public beach nearby.We strolled round the local farmer's market before heading back to the hotel to check in.We had a fabulous view of the ocean from our room even though it was a "partial" ocean view.

Over thousands (if not millions!) of years, the lava flowing into the sea has created some amazing tide pools filled with corals, sea anemones, turtles and fish of every colour.After quickly unpacking, we set out to explore the rock pools and watch the turtles gently feeding on the algae on the rocks.

The green sea turtle is the largest hard-shelled sea and were a source of food, tools, and ornamentation for early Hawaiians. With the arrival of western culture, however, the level of exploitation of this resource increased dramatically. Large numbers of green turtles were harvested throughout the Hawaiian Islands through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1974, the State of Hawaii finally passed a regulation providing some protection, but this was virtually ignored until 1978, when the Hawaiian green turtle was placed on the list of threatened species.

Adjacent to the hotel is Kahalu`u Bay which is an amazing place to snorkel.Because of the lava rock, the bay is quite shallow with rock pools that fill with amazing fish when the tide comes in.The next morning after breakfast I headed for the pool while Ant headed for the beach to snorkel.When he came back he said it was like swimming in an aquarium - I was extremely brave and had a go myself the next day - because it is so shallow, I managed to snorkel there without getting out of my depth and was very proud of myself!!

After 2 days of beach, pool and snorkelling, on our last afternoon we hit the town again and headed for the Kona Brewery were Ant got to try 6 of the local brews. The company was started in 1995 by a father and son team who had a dream to create fresh, local island brews made with spirit, passion and quality.

Our flight to Maui wasn't until 2.50 the following afternoon so that gave us time on our last morning to visit a coffee farm.Mountain Thunder is a family run organic coffee farm.We spent a very pleasant couple of hours learning all about the hand weeding, pruning, composting, hand-picking, wet-milling, sun-drying, dry-milling, grading and quality roasting processes and trying some of the coffee of course.

We got to the airport early and the booking clerk said she would try and get us on the earlier plane (1:15 instead of 2:50).The departure lounge (!) was a bench outside the terminal (which was a portacabin) on the other side of the fence to the runway!!We knew this was going to be a small plane, but we weren't expecting a 9 seater Cessna!!!The views as we were leaving the BigIsland were amazing but a little sad as this is my favourite place of the trip so far.