Honeymooning in Hawaii - The West Side (Kona & Polulu Valley).

Finally have time to write this post, a year later! Hawaii was one of the strictest places to travel during the Pandemic with 14-day quarantines before they created their Safe Travels Program where you could bypass quarantine with proof of vaccination. After 16 hours of fly time with a layover across 2 long flights, Washington D.C --> Seattle, Oregon --> we arrived in Kailua- Kona. We picked up our Jeep at the rental place by the airport, and they kindly gave us a $100 discount off because it was officially Colby's birthday at midnight. That was the first sign of how hospitable and kind the residents of The Big Island are. We fell asleep instantly at our Airbnb. We awoke to our room covered in Palm Trees in a beautiful climate of low 70s and mid-80s during the day (much better than the Northeastern cold). This blog post will be a little different than my usual National Park blogs. We did visit Volcanos National park, but we saw so much spectacular nature that I feel it is worth writing about.

First, a little intro to Hawaii. Did you know that Hawaii is made up of 137 different islands? There are 8 main islands formed by Pacific Plate and volcanic activity. The oldest and most densely populated islands are Kaua'i and Niihau. The Big Island is known as Hawai'i, Hawaii is the youngest and largest island of them all dating back to half a million years ago. It has a dry (Kona) and wet side (Hilo) split up by the largest mountain in the world, despite most of its mass under the sea, Mauna Kea (stay tuned for that blog post). We start our journey on the west side for a few days before heading to the east.

Since we were coming from the Northeast, we were six hours ahead in our mind, so we were able to effortlessly start our days at 6 am or even 5 am since we practically slept in. Yes, that did mean we were in bed by 7 pm or 8 pm the first couple of days. That is my favorite type of traveling, maximizing the sunshine and chockful of adventures type of day.

We started out slowly on our first day and just decided to explore Kona and get breakfast. Early bird gets the worm, we were one of the first ones at Island Lava Java and had an amazing breakfast with a view of the bay. When we finished there was a long line of people waiting to get in. They were limiting their capacity to have more than six feet apart despite the outdoor seating and ocean air.

We walked off Colby's sugar spike around Kona downtown and along the bay and visited Hon'ls beach where the first boogie board was invented. However, mentioned in writings from the crew during Captain James Cook's voyages to Hawaii were sightings of Natives surfing as early as 1779. A longboard made of ulu wood was discovered in a cave in 1905 and became the oldest Paipo board. James Cook, a British explorer had a controversial history with the natives in Hawaii, ultimately leading to his death.

We headed to Makalewana beach (try saying that ten times fast) in our Jeep blasting the Beach Boys which became the soundtrack as we circumvented the entire Big Island for the next seven days. Kona is the second most populated area of Hawaii, after Hilo (which was our next stop). We quickly realized why we needed a 4X4 wheel drive. If you wanted to get to the most beautiful beaches on the Big Island you either had to walk a couple of miles across terrain molded by lava or hitch a ride/drive your 4X4 to not bottom out.

I will spare you the pictures of my bloodied knee. Dorothy, we are not in Miami Beach anymore, where you can dive in and not expect shallow reefs. Oops. Looks like cloth masks also double as an item to help put pressure on a wound to stop the bleeding. It took the whole trip to heal and thankfully did not get infected because I had a water bottle that I quickly used to wash the wound and the sun to dry it. Now I have a scar a year later and will remember Hawaii forever when Monica took a tumble into the ocean. On our way out we were met with a herd of goats! We saw that was common for herds of feral goats to be roaming, wild turkeys, chicken, and peacocks. Colby joked that if he lived on this island he would not have to buy meat from the grocery store.

Thankfully, Colby decided instead to get his dinner tonight at Broke Da Mouth Grindz. It was the first time I had purple sweet potato, also known as Taro. We then finished our night at Ola Brewery and Kona Brewery. I preferred Ola Brewery since it is smaller and had better craft beers in our opinion despite the nationwide popularity of Kona Brewery.

After a busy day, we fell asleep to the calm breeze and the rustling of the Palm trees.

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The next morning we woke up at five am easily and headed to one of the most sacred spots on the Big Island, Polulu Valley. Little did I know that place was going to curse me later.

It took about an hour and a half to get to so when we arrived we were one of the first ones there and parking is very sparse on the edge of these massive cliffs. Already on the way there the landscape changed from Kona's drier climate to a more lush valley. Kohala is the oldest volcano out of the 5 volcanos that make up the Big Island but last erupted 120,000 years ago. When it erupted parts of the volcano fell into the ocean and created these deep valleys with massive cliffs. One of the valleys created is Polulu Valley. The most visited is Waipio Valley which we visit later on and explore the Taro fields while riding on horseback.

When we arrived it was still misty but nothing short of spectacular.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ccba74_9f154dfe5d6446ab85d424d4a12f1ca5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

When we left and hiked up the steep trail, the fog cleared and the sun came out and enhanced the beauty of its lush green valley and dark black sand contrasted by the aqua-blue waves. I can understand why Hawaiian natives settled around these beautiful valleys. Parts of Polulu Valley are privately owned and there are sacred burial grounds.

Now onto how I was cursed. Religion in Hawaii is very complex and changed a lot over hundreds of years going from worshipping one God to many Gods and deities and to Christianity post-contact. Pele is one of the most famous Hawaiian Gods. She is the goddess of volcanoes and fire and the creator of the Hawaiian Islands. I learned later on thanks to my sister, there is a curse known as Pele's curse when one takes a pumice stone or volcanic rock away from the Big Island. Unknown to myself, I took a pumice stone for the rest of the trip to remove callouses and exfoliate my feet after walking or hiking for many hours. Thankfully my sister told me before I left the Big Island but I left its resting place on Hapuna Beach and not its original place, Polulu Valley. When I came home a series of unfortunate events happened. I am a big believer very bad luck comes in 3. These bad luck events happened as soon as I came back. I got Covid right after my booster so I could not spend New Year with my family, my credit score sank due to an automatic payment error (was able to dispute it later but required time, evidence, and stress), and then I had a pinched nerve injury that to this day sometimes flares up a year later.

The moral of the story, which is something I thought I was good at it, but to respect the places you visit and not take things that are not given to you.

Please take some time to keep Polulu Valley sacred without the addition of man-made structures and sign this petition: https://www.change.org/p/department-of-land-and-natural-resources-protect-pololu-valley.

That concludes the first part of our Hawaii honeymoon! Here are some yummy food pictures of fruit (red banana that tastes like custard), Poke, and an amazing Piña colada I had later that day. I also got to visit the Kona bookstore which I could have spent hours in. The next post will be about the east side of the Big Island!