We spent the day getting some exercise today – oh, and doing that relaxation thing again.
Around the Hilton
We found things a bit noisy last night – our room gives us great views of the pool and ocean and the wonderful sunset but we are also quite near the restaurant/bar which does not close until 11pm so it was very noisy from the bar patrons till late (so Adrienne tells me – I went out like a light !).
After our breakfast we walked across the road to the Kings Shops. These are right next door to the Queens Marketplace shops . (You might have guessed how Adrienne picked our accommodation !) We bought a few more essentials and gifts and wandered around both centres.
We then walked about a kilometer or so down the road to the Hilton Hotel resort. This whole area is a “private” area and really only the resorts and various gated communities have access. Next door to us is a very flash looking gated community – these homes back on to the ocean. Worth a bomb I suspect ! The whole area is immaculately manicured – tree lined streets, bowling green lawns etc – but at this time of year pretty quiet.
The walk between the resorts
Feeding the dolphins
The Hilton resort is just huge ! They have their own monorail and boat shuttles to get people between different parts of the resort. They also have their own “dolphin experience” – a huge area where people can pay a fortune to swim with trained dolphins. We sat at the nearby resort bar and had a drink and watched part of the show and then the feeding of the dolphins.
We were then able to walk back to our resort along the ocean front. It was a bit rough – over a crushed volcanic rock path but right along the waters edge.
The cloudy sky and setting sun
The weather today was probably the worst we have had. No rain and still quite hot and humid but also quite hazy/cloudy. Apparently they get a lot of volcano fog on the Big Island but today it was also quite cloudy. We bought some lovely fresh fruit from the Queens Marketplace and sat on our balcony to have our lunch.
We also bought some cheap goggles and snorkels at the Marketplace as when we had walked along the beach we had noticed the exorbitant rental prices and worked out it was cheaper to buy them and even throw them away when we were finished ! We will hopefully get to use them again on Oahu.
After the sun set !
So after lunch we headed down to the beach to try them out and give the Gopro its first water excursion. Unfortunately with the cloudy sky and churned up ocean bottom the underwater video was a bit poor but we had a bit of fun with it anyway. After a little while we decided to head back to the resort pool to swim a bit more. We had vouchers for free Mai Tai’s from the pool bar so we couldn’t let them go to waste ! As we sat around the pool we could also see them setting up for the bi-weekly sunset luau.
We thought that with all the cloud around the sunset would be a bit poor tonight. Well the actual sun setting was pretty tame but the colours of the sky after the sun had gone below the horizon were as spectacular as last night !
For dinner we headed across to the Kings Shops again as we had seen a couple of restaurants earlier in the day we thought looked good. The luau was in full swing so we thought the resort restaurant might be a bit noisy again. We settled on a restaurant called the Three Fat Pigs. We both decided on the local fish tonight – Mahi Mahi. Adrienne’s was wrapped in prosciutto and mine came with tempura battered beets. They were both great – the food throughout our trip has been excellent.
Tomorrow we head for Volcano National Park and our last night on the Big Island. After all this relaxation it will be nice to be back on the road !