Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Canada & Hawaii 2016
The great escape
There were no small-hours disturbances and I awoke to another glorious-looking day. Nor was there any evidence that stacks of beach furniture, or indeed anything else, had been blown around in violent gusts. It turned out that Madeline had made a sudden turn southwards, thus avoiding a direct hit on the Big Island, and around the same time had weakened sufficiently to justify being downgraded to a tropical storm. We heard on TV that the east coast of the island had suffered torrential rain and further flooding, while the west coast - including our location - had barely been touched. Due to the various uncertainties and closures already caused by the twin-hurricane threat, we decided to swap around our plans for Thursday and Friday, making this our lazy day at the hotel.
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Breakfast at the Mauna Kea coffee shop was nice enough, but prices were extortionate for what we ate and drank - and note, this is not the hotel restaurant that I'm talking about, just the in-house coffee shop! The rest of the morning was then spent simply enjoying the pool. In my case, that mostly meant proximity to the pool while I caught up on my trip notes.
For lunch, we made the
short drive to Waikoloa and, given that we were in the western world
rather than Asia, made the unusual decision to have lunch at a food
court. We purchased our food at Ippy's Hawaiian BBQ, an
outlet that had attracted some very positive reviews on the
Internet. Their signature deal was an assemblage of two meats and
assorted carbohydrate types, so I had teriyaki beef and mahi-mahi as
proteins, with steamed rice and macaroni salad representing the
second category. It was certainly tasty enough, but a polystyrene
box did not allow it to rate highly in the presentation stakes.
The afternoon was spent relaxing on the lawn area adjacent to the beach, the only notable event being the arrival of what appeared to be a large wedding party. We hoped that they wouldn't be overly boisterous. In the evening, after watching a spectacular sunset, we enjoyed cocktails and a small-plates dinner in the hotel's Copper Bar, which was most pleasant. The wedding party was present, but all things considered, they weren't overly noisy.
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