Hawai'i 2008 - Day 3 - White Sands, White Tents
Hawai'i Info Alert!! The Reid Guide to Making Kona Vacations EasierYays: Provisions of all sorts, as cheap as you can find on the Island (which isn't necessarily Cheap) Boos: It's a Supermarket, not a Tourist Attraction Yays: Quick, cheap, authentic Hawaiian fast food (rice, curries, BBQ, etc) Boos: We're not eating rice or chicken for a few weeks Yays: Exhaustive selection of Hawaiian swag, chotchsky, alohawear Boos: Rampant Hawaiian Commercialism Yays: Huge selection of books to keep 11-year-olds and their Dads entertained Boos: Said to have driven all the other booksellers off the Kona Coast Yays: Makes for an amazingly better morning wake-up Boos: Yeah, the in-room stuff is free... but come on now, really..KTA Supermarkets L&L Hawaiian Barbeque Hilo Hatties Stores Border's Books in Kona Using the in-room coffee-pak filters, dump the coffee, replace with local Kona Coffee, buy some distilled water at the store
Saturday... the jet lag lessening... the morning dawns sunny, and we decide to check out another snorkeling location, up north of the Kona Airport... Kuki'o Beach isn't all that well-known, and the snorkeling is wonderful, the beach is white pristine sand, and the coral relatively undamaged... we had a lovely time, and didn't overstay our time in the Sun...
Driving around.. exploring, hitting up Border's, L&L, then back to the hotel... deciding to attend 5PM Mass at St. Michael's, which we'd found on our last trip here... but when we got there, we see a large white tent in the parking lot.. turns out an recent earthquake led to the the condemnation of the building... so, Mass outside, with traffic noise and town noise and the tropical breezes and not a little sweating... different, to be sure...
Afterwards, a walk around town, and Grace's first experience with real Hawaiian shave ice (note, 'shave', not 'shaved').. three flavors on a snowball seemingly as big as your head (and, no, thank goodness, she didn't try to finish the whole thing)...
Dinner at a nice little Thai place in the local shopping center, then another early night.
