Hawaii - Big Island

The Big Island has many opportunities to participate in activities of all types. The Big Island definitely entails a lot more of the guided-tour type of activities, whereas the high points on Maui are more do-it-yourself. Our highlights are as follows:

- Trip to the Volcano National Park to view lava up-close as it flows to the ocean.
- Helicopter flight around the island: up-close to the live eruption, to the point where the lava flows into the ocean, and up to the rainforests north of Hilo.
- Sunset cruise and snorkel cruise aboard a racing yacht.
- Trip to the summit of Mauna Kea at sunset, followed by stargazing through a large telescope.
- Golf, golf, golf.

Quick Tips:

- Read my bit about timeshare viewing. If you are on the Big Island for a few days and plan to partake in the paid activities, you might want to consider viewing a timeshare.

As much as I loathe doing these things, the way they price the actvities almost forces you to go look at a timeshare - or pay twice as much for all of your activities. We did it and saved about . Or, we did it and paid fair value for our activities, instead of double what they are worth, depending on your perspective.

- We found that the restaurants at the Hilton were pretty run-of-the-mill, but horribly overpriced. Contrary to popular belief, you can get a great meal in Hawaii without getting soaked. Resort restaurants are usually okay - not great - so you aren't missing anything by exploring elsewhere for food. Ask your concierge - usually they will give you an honest opinion.

Best Way To Get Around:

You probably need a rental car, unless you are doing a short stay and don't plan to leave your resort. We couldn't find hardly any good rates on cars at KOA through normal means, so we bid for one on Priceline and got an SUV for /day, which is decent but not great. You need a 4WD if you plan on driving to the Mauna Kea summit on your own.

If you stay at the Hilton, bring good walking shoes. The resort is huge and you will walk MILES each day at the Hilton alone. Not kidding - we figure we walked 3 - 4 miles per day just going to and from our room (it was 0.7 miles from the parking lot). There are trams and boats you can use as well, but we found that walking was faster in most cases.

We didn't see any taxis to speak of, but I'm sure you can get one by asking your bellman to call one. Probably only relevant for a Kona hotel. Obviously, none of these towns are large enough for mass transit, except for maybe a small bus system.

*** Note: We stayed on a six night ALON award stay using 100,000 HHonors points. Room price is a guesstimate by me. I've seen non-points-earning rates (e.g., Expedia Rates) for around $150 and HHonors-earning rates a tad bit higher. Rates may vary widely based on time of year, type of room, etc. ***

Comments about the ALON Award: this is the most popular hotel award in the HHonors program. Six nights at any Hawaiian resort for 100,000 points. We were able to get the dates we wanted without any problems, but we were there in late summer. Winter/Spring is a whole different ballgame, and I've heard availability on the reward stays can get tight. We have HH Gold status (mid-tier), and got fine treatment by the hotel. The award led to a 100% free room - no taxes, no resort fees, no nonsense. I was impressed.

The Room: We were upgraded to the Executive Floor in the Ocean Tower (there are actually several executive floors). There had been some question prior to the stay whether they'd upgrade a free room, but they did so without us even having to ask for it. The room was wonderful - high floor, great view of the ocean and sunset. Our room was large - a sitting area, a walk-in closet, and big bathroom. The Executive Lounge was nearby - that's where we had free complimentary breakfast every morning, soft drinks/water throughout the day, and snacks for happy hour.

The resort itself is HUGE. Locals call it the Hilton Walkalotta. The grounds are very nice - a lagoon, two huge pools, lots of plants and flowers, etc. I thought the place was beautiful. When you walk from the lobby to the Ocean Tower (about a 1/2 mile), you are walking through semi-enclosed hallways filled with art.

The Ocean Tower is, in my opinion, the best place to be, although the Palace Tower looked like it had some very nice ocean-view rooms as well.

There are about five restaurants on the property: Italian, Japanese, an outdoor casual lunch place, a casual sushi place, and an upscale oceanfront restaurant for dinner. I might've missed one or two, and there are a couple of coffeeshops and poolside bars on the grounds as well. We found everything to be very, very pricey - even by Hawaiian resort standards. We didn't do much eating/drinking on the resort; we found this to be a minor disappointment after coming from an upscale but reasonably-priced Marriott on Maui.

For our first night in Waikaloa, we thought we'd do something romantic - so we made reservations at the Italian restaurant at the Hilton, near the Ocean Tower. This Italian claims to be the "Best Italian in the Hawaiian Islands".

Well, to be frank, the place was OK, but way, WAY overpriced. If that is the best Italian the state has to offer, I think Hawaii should get emergency federal assistance in the form of a few good Italian chefs from New York City.

I had a $42 rack of lamb that tasted a lot like a $22 rack of lamb. My wife had a $25 spaghetti dish that tasted like a $12 spaghetti dish. We didn't even buy a bottle of wine because we recognized everything on the wine list - and how overpriced it was.

Atmosphere was okay - kind of romantic but not overly so. It's a large restaurant, but not too crowded, even on a Friday night.

In short, the food and service was good. I don't want to give the impression that Donatoni's doesn't do a good job. They do. We just expected something spectacular, and Donatoni's doesn't deliver anything out of the ordinary. Unless you are absolutely dying for Italian food and could care less what it costs, take a pass on this one.

Hapuna Prince was the finest golf course we played in Hawaii (this includes Kapalua Plantation and Wailea Golf Club from Maui). The staff and service at this course are also top-quality. Green fees were $145 for two for midweek morning in the summer, but expect this to be somewhat higher for Winter/Spring or on the weekends. We played 18 holes and never saw another human being except for the beverage cart attendant. The round took us about three and a half hours to complete, and that was taking our time to take lots of pictures. Unfortunately, none of them with a digital camera, so I can't post them here.

The track itself is of moderate difficulty - typical for a resort course. I think it was about 6800 from the tips. The course is beautiful in all respects -I scored very well because I never had a bad fairway lie and I always got a true roll on the green. My wife played the best round of her life!

The course takes on a mountain-course personality for most of the round. The ocean is always in view, but never in play. Man-made lakes are in play on a few holes, but water isn't the primary hazard: lava and sand provide most of the challenge here. Lava is nearly impossible to hit out of.

My favorite holes were the par fives. Almost all of them were reachable with two big shots. Great risk-reward holes. They also happened to be some of the most spectacular holes on the course - I think it was the 12th or so that was 580 yds, straight downhill, with awesome views of the ocean in the background.

Very cool course - if I would only play one course in Hawaii, this is the one I would pick.

For what it's worth, the Mauna Kea course is next door and owned by the same resort and managed by the same people. It is more expensive, but I'm told it's also a wonderful course. I think the Senior Tour plays there or something...

*** Note: Most chopper companies offer shorter rides for less money. We did the longer ride that takes you all the way around the island. ***

Blue Hawaiian is the helicopter company across the street from the Waikaloa Village area where our hotel was. We booked our tour through the Bay Club. $210 for a two hour ride on an A-Star helicopter.

The A-Star is a big helicopter that seats six passengers and one pilot. Blue Hawaiian is especially proud of their helicopters for being the largest, nicest, and safest on the island (I've never ridden in another helicopter, so I don't really know...). It was pretty nice, and everybody had Bose noise-cancelling headsets.

We took off from Waikaloa and headed up following the Saddle Road between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. We turned south and headed for our first major sight: the Pu'u O'o vent where the current active eruption is taking place. We got good views up close to the vent and surrounding lava flows.

Next, we followed the lava flows down to the coast and observed the lava entry point to the ocean. This is at the Chain of Craters Road in Volcano National Park where people can drive to view live lava flows.

After spending plenty of time viewing volcanic activity, we flew east to the mostly uninhabited corner of Hawaii to view older lava flows and see where villages had existed as recent as 10 years ago (before being completely eliminated by lava). Then we headed back north to Hilo Airport, where we landed to refuel.

After a 20-minute break on the ground, we reboarded and continued north for the Rainforest portion of the trip. We flew along the coast and observed some of the old Sugar Mill villages. Then we continued north to the Waipei Valley and saw a lot of waterfalls falling off of high cliffs into the ocean. As a bonus, we also saw a large school of spinner dolphins below us in the ocean. Finally, we turned and headed inland through a deep valley (a la Jurassic Park). We saw spectacular high waterfalls in the valleys and the cliffs surrounding them. Finally, we continued across the island to the Waikaloa side and landed back at our origination point about two hours later.

You can buy a videotape of your actual flight (complete with the music and pilot's commentary) for $20. We bought the tape and watched it once - I'd recommend buying it to remember your trip.

I have lots of digital photos of this, but I can't find a way to upload them here. I will try to compress a couple of them down as small as possible and load them at some point.

If you don't plan on going on any activities with tour companies, then skip this entry. It's targeted at people who are going to be on the island for a few days and want to do things like ride helicopters, go on sunset/snorkel/dinner cruises, play golf, take guided hikes, or do anything else that involves paying a guide or tour company.

On the Big Island, most of the activities are very expensive. For example, a helicopter ride for 1h40min is $340/person. Golf is $145/person. Guided hikes are about $100/person. The list goes on and the prices are all very high.

The catch is that all of the tour companies work with the people that sell timeshares to funnel the discounts through agents for the primary purpose of getting you to go through the whole timeshare sales pitch. We were unable to score any discounts through other means, including our hotel concierge. He said "go look at a timeshare".

Once you decide to view a timeshare, most activities become half-off, even if you don't actually BUY the timeshare. It's the age-old game of getting you to look and listen that they are paying you for. So, as much as we didn't want to do it, we agreed to go hear the schpiel.

Here's what we did:
(1) We arrived at the Big Island and talked to our concierge about activities. He explained how the activities worked and how they are nearly all attached to timeshare-viewing.
(2) We went to the Activities Booth in the Kings Shops. We got the list of available discounts we would be eligible for after viewing the timeshare. The list was long, and included plenty of activities of all types (helicopters, hikes, cruises, golf, luaus, etc. etc. etc).
(3) We left the booth to think about it - we reviewed the list and decided that we would, in fact, save hundreds of dollars by viewing the timeshare.
(4) We went back to the booth and signed up to see a timeshare. We went over to the Bay Club (Hilton) about a mile away and met with a salesman.
(5) This is the step where most people have to go on an hour-long tour of a one or two bedroom condo. If you have no interest in buying, you simply say NO about a dozen times and you're done. If you DO want to buy...well, I have no advice for you there because I've never bought one of these things. For us, we got lucky: we told our salesman that we were on our honeymoon, and he short-circuited the whole process and we were done in 15 minutes (he explained that he KNOWS honeymooners don't buy timeshares, and he was smart enough and kind enough to save us all the time).
(6) After the schpiel, you go to the Bay Club concierge to book your activities. We booked everything we did for the next six days through this concierge - all at half-off or close to it.
(7) You don't have to book all at once or immediately. We decided a day later to book another round of golf. We called the Bay Club up, gave them our name, and they set us up at half-price.
(8) They are undoubtedly making a little bit of a cut every time you book a discounted activity, so you don't have to be bashful about "taking advantage" of the system. They know what they are doing. They sell a lot of timeshares even if YOU say no.

As it turns out, everybody on our helicopter and most of the people on our cruises had done the same thing. I honestly think the "system" was different on the Big Island, but for now, timeshare viewing is about the only way (without some other sort of inside connection) to fair prices on these activities.