A New Year

Well, it's a new year. Since Christmas 2008 we have been busy preparing for and then taking our Winter vacation, which we did over the past week plus. We went to the Big Island of Hawaii, which is known as Kona in the islands. This was my second trip to Hawaii, having visited Kauai in 2000. This trip was our first to an island with active volcanoes on it. The surf was too high on the Kona coast to really do much swimming or snorkeling, but the volcanoes more than made up for any lack of enjoying the watersports.

Hawaii is wonderful to visit. We enjoyed fresh bananas and papayas grown locally on the island. We hiked through lush rain forests and lava flow deserts. We walked through a volcano crater and we watched molten lava flow into the sea. We rode horses through an ancient valley and we visited places where ancient Hawaiians carved petroglyphs into lava beds, leaving marks and messages that no one can decipher completely today. We saw pounding surf waves, drank wonderful Kona coffee, saw rainbows, snow capped volcano tops, and generally had a great time.

Traveling from North Carolina to Hawaii involves, first and foremost, 10+ hours of flying time between RDU airport and Honolulu. Then, a transfer to an inter-island flight on Hawaiian Airlines and finally you get to Kona. We tried it two ways, going American Airlines through DFW and LAX, and flying Delta through Atlanta. Of the two routes, the Delta flight from Atlanta straight to Honolulu was probably the more enjoyable way to go, even though 10 straight hours on a plane gets old.

In the next few days I'll try to think of something thought-provoking to say about the trip, but for now I'll simply say that Hawaii is great. But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself. It's a lot more fun than reading about it.