Hawaii - October 03, 2003

During the night it had rained a little, but by morning it was clear and warm, so Chu-Wan, Michelle and I set out without the in-laws to look around.

We headed south on Ali Highway, but it turned out to be a dead end within a mile. "Dead" end was quite appropriate, as the end of the road is the location of a bloody battle in 1820.

The ancient Hawaiian religion was based upon a series of kapus. These were a complex series of laws that could not be broken for fear of terrible retribution from the gods. Transgression usually meant that the offender (and sometimes his family) was put to death to forestall the gods' wrath.

When Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii, the Hawaiians witnessed the crew breaking many kapus, but when retribution never came, the foundations of their belief system were undermined.

In 1819, King Kamehameha II abolished the kapu system. Despite what many people believe, Christian missionaries didn't bring the downfall, but they did arrive just after a vacuum was created.

In 1820, a group of rebels, led by the king's cousin unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the king and bring back the old religion, and that was where the road ended. The battlefield, which is nothing but a lava flow is also the burial ground for the forces who died here. It is also now surrounded by a golf course.

We followed a blocked off road down to the sea. There's no beach there, just jagged basaltic rocks and crashing surf. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to come back at night. Chu-Wan is genuinely afraid of ghosts and I don't believe in them - but I do know a good photo of one would be worth some money. If nothing else, there were no street lights and no buildings, so the area was guaranteed to be dark, and it would give me a chance to test the low-light functioning of my digital camera.

With a dead end to the south, we headed north into Kailua-Kona following the shoreline. There are only a few, small beaches along the coast, and they were packed. At several of them the water appeared treacherous. Unfortunately, I'm no expert on what constitutes treacherous water, but it stands to reason that there's nothing but deep water between here and Asia, and as the shore drops off quickly there's nothing to slow it down until it reaches the shore.

Still, I was beginning to the think the water was getting scarier and scarier each new place we went.

We stopped at Costco for lunch and I was both pleased and annoyed that Hawaii, like Taiwan and Missouri, has good hot dogs, not the inferior ones they sell at the Arizona Costcos. I was also pleased that they had local Hawaiian DVDs, and I was able to pick up 2 sets of Kikaida DVDs, which are difficult to get on the mainland. We didn't do much shopping, but we decided to come back later in the evening and stock up the kitchen to save some money on meals.

One other good thing, gas is $0.30 a gallon cheaper at Costco than anywhere else on the island. The minivan we were driving certainly wasn't an economy car and we had some long drives planned for the week.

So far, despite the island being dominated by gigantic volcanoes, we hadn't seen anything of them. A weather system seemed perpetually parked just up the gently sloping mountain, forever obscuring the top.

We decided to drive up a road listed on our maps that appeared to travel quite a ways up the side of the mountain. We never quite found the road we were looking for, but we traveled up through an area of very nice homes. We finally intersected highway 190/180 and headed north back towards the timeshare.

Michelle needed to rest, so we hung around the timeshare for the afternoon.

I contacted a local internet provider and got setup for a weekly dial-up account. I got caught up with happenings at work, and checked the lava flow information at the volcano. I came a long way to see lava and I'd be really upset if it suddenly stopped flowing.

That evening we headed back into Kailua-Kona. My father-in-law insisted that we eat somewhere that we could see the sunset. This proved move difficult than it should have been. Finding a restaurant we could all agree on wasn't easy and time was working against us as the sun inexorably sank in the west. My father-in-law suggested a Mexican food restaurant, which was fine with me, even though I knew it couldn't be any good. However, Mexican food didn't work for my mother-in-law.

At practically the last moment, I found a restaurant called Hang Loose which had the requisite view of the sunset and appeared to have seafood and burgers. We plunked down in our seats just moments before the sunset, which was spectacular. The only place better to see it was a ship out in the harbor, apparently a sunset cruise for just that purpose.

We needn't have worried about the waitresses interrupting our sunset-watching because while we watched the sunset, they stood about 15 feet away arguing about who was going to have to take our table. They either didn't realize there was an English speaker or two at the table who could hear them or they were too dumb to realize that wasn't the best customer service. They also probably didn't realize I was going to rake them over the coals on a web page someday.

When the menus finally did arrive, they curiously lacked much in the way of seafood which is what everyone (except me) wanted.

I had a burger, "medium rare", which was charred to a briquette and the rest of the experience went downhill from there. All that and dinner set us back $60.

When we were leaving, just when we thought it couldn't have gotten worse, I overheard our waitress telling the next table over about the specials of the day - all sorts of fresh seafood options. She never bothered to tell us. If I could have gone back and taken 15% off the bill as a negative tip, I would have.

If you're ever in Kailua-Kona, don't go to Hang Loose. Go sit on their deck, watch the sunset, then leave.

It was too late to go to Costco and shop, so we went back home.

The next day we planned to go see the active volcano.

On to Day 6 ==>

Hawaii - The Timeshare, upper level	Hawaii - Timeshare master bedroom. Love that color green!	Hawaii - Volcanic Coast	Hawaii - Volcanic Coast	Hawaii - Waves crashing into volcanic shoreline
Hawaii - Walking next to ancient burial grounds	Hawaii - Michelle enjoying some fruit	Hawaii - Michelle demands more fruit	Hawaii - King Kamehameha's summer place	Hawaii - King Kamehameha's summer place. Note the gentle slope of the mountain in the background
Hawaii - Grandpa and Michelle	Hawaii - Grandpa and Michelle	Hawaii - King Kamehameha's place - Kailua	Hawaii - Cruise Ship	Hawaii - Family picture
Hawaii - Family picture	King Kamehameha's place - Kailua, Hawaii	King Kamehameha's place - Kailua, Hawaii	Hawaii - Grandma and Grandpa, when they thought no one was looking...	Hawaii - Kailua-Kona
Hawaii - Cruise Ships in the harbor	Hawaii - Michelle enjoying a Pina Colada at Hang Loose