Hawaii - The Big Island (Kona) - Day 9

Thursday August 23, 2007

Today we had to tender from the ship into Kona on the Big Island. The tendering went really smoothly compared to the last time when we were in New Zealand. I think it helped that we had 4 tender boats going at the beginning to get everyone off (compared to 2 before).

We had no plans in Kona as there wasn't really anything that we wanted to drive to so we didn't rent a car. We walked around town checking out the different tours that were available. We had finally decided to take the boat tour called "Captain Zodiak". There were 9 of us on the Zodiak with two staff who were full of sailor type jokes (this is another boat we saw from the same tour group). The boat was quite fast and we had to hold on or we could have fallen out of the boat. The disclaimer waiver covered back, neck injuries and pregnant women to name a few.


We first headed out into the sea and saw some Pilot whales. They swim in groups and are a smaller whale. All the fisherman were hanging around there too as they are an indication of the many fish in the area.




After seeing the whales we went back to shore south of the Kona area. We were going snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay near the Captain Cook monument. Apparently, Captain Cook came to the island and they thought he was a God because he had white clothes on. He did some trading of some metal items. They then realized that he wasn't a god and stole the nails out of his boat. They took his row boat and he went to get it and they killed him. So the monument stands on the land and is actually a small plot of land that is owned by the British government in his honour.


After snorkeling for a while we headed back to Kona along the shore. We could see the lava tubes and some blow holes along the shore. There was also a cinder cone that had some red coloured soil in it and the Hawaiian's thought that it looked like Pele, the goddess of fire. You can see some eyes as lava tubes and a sinister looking face with the body as the hump of the cinder cone. So the Hawaiian's consider this part of the island sacred lands so much so that the highway was built inland away from these lands.


Further up the coast we spotted some Spinner dolphins. They like their name really do spin out of the water. It was beautiful to be able to see the over 50 of them in their pod.

We were back into Kona at around 1 pm with a few hours still before we had to be back on the ship. We did a bit of shopping but Jamie wasn’t too thrilled with going for a long time so he headed back after a while. I continued on down the main road which included a farmers market and also higher end shops. I did go into a scrapbook store along the way too. I checked it out but I didn’t want to have to explain to Jamie my purchases so I refrained (there was only 2 pieces of paper I wanted anyway). I got back to the tender boats and the security was all done by bag searching and metal detectors (we had to split up into boy and girls for that).

We got ready for dinner and then caught a comedy act in the lounge.