Driving north from Kona gives many people the impression that the Big Island must be covered mostly in black lava rock, deterring road trips for tourists staying in the deluxe resorts in Mauna Kea, Mauna Lani and Waikoloa. Certainly, an extended stay enjoying the gorgeous beaches and scenic, challenging golf courses as well as the luxurious hotel grounds may be an ideal vacation for many people.
The palatial Hilton Waikoloa Village offers such a retreat. Sprawling over 62 oceanfront acres, the resort's transportation system includes both boats on canals and a monorail. We stopped at this resort for lunch, a gourmet hamburger enjoyed at the café alongside a private four-acre lagoon. When the waitress took our order, she asked if we would be charging it to our room, and we chuckled as we told her to "Put it on the Underhill's tab," although I think the reference to the old Chevy Chase movie "Fletch" might have been lost on the 21 year-old. At that point, I should have checked my wallet, but I didn't until we had finished lunch. You always know you're at a deluxe resort and not on a cruise ship when the bill comes, and I pulled out my wallet for a credit card, at which point I noticed I had none. I did, however, have enough cash to cover the tab including the tip, but that left $2 to pay for the $7 parking fee. Out to the car we trudged, hoping to scrounge up enough change from our backpack to pay our way out. Because I had on swim trunks most of the time in Hawaii, I had been throwing all my coins in the backpack when we went to the grocery store near our hotel for drinks, snacks and some really good deli sandwiches. When I added it all up, we had more than enough money…36 cents to spare!
Before lunch, we rode a Hilton boat, not dissimilar to Jungle Boats at Disneyland, sans hippos, to explore the resort's entire canal system.
Earlier in the day, we had traveled further north to visit Mauumae Beach, a crescent shaped, white sand beach located near the Mauna Kea Resort Hotel. With a private residence between the resort and this beach, there is no foot access, and only a limited number of parking passes are issued each day to non-resort guests. This makes Mauumae Beach almost empty, even on a bright sunny day as this was. I try to avoid carrying too much money or credit cards to the beach, especially one purported to be somewhat deserted, hence my lack of credit cards later in the day. Embarrassingly I must admit that I actually had my credit cards in our camera case inside the backpack, where apparently they had dropped when I put my wallet in there at one point, although I didn't discover this until returning to the room after lunch. Anyway, we arrived at Mauumae Beach early enough in the day to snag one of the 25 daily parking passes and proceeded to while away the morning on the gently sloping beach, reading and taking dips in the warm, turquoise ocean.
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