When we finally got moving, Debbie and I walked from the condo, around the resort area and into the HUGE Hilton Hotel complex. It's about a 3 mile walk. We went to the nearest beach access from here. On the way, there we went past the beautiful tropical plants here. It's so funny to see the lush greenery of the resort, then a large area of dark lava rock, then back to greenery! There is a trail through the lava rock that is called King's trail. It is 32 miles long from the north to Kona. It would be hot traveling over the lava rock that absorbs the sun.
We went to the beach through some pools where long time ago the Hawaiian's let in fish from the ocean into the pools to let them grow for food. There were gates they opened and closed to let the fish in. Not used anymore, but preserved for history sake.
While there, we saw that the surf was WAY up and LOTS of surfers were out taking advantage of the high surf. Some waves were up to 25' high, according to weather.com, in some areas. So, consequently, some beaches in Kona were closed to snorkelers etc.. Too dangerous. We saw several helicopters patrolling the beach area.
From there we went over to the Hilton. Oh My. So oppulent! All enclusive, I guess. There is an open walkway that leads to a pool type area that opens onto the ocean. There is a train to take you to the ends of the resort, I guess. There is a dolphin pool where it's $$$ to "swim with the dolphins". We saw about 6 people doing it. They were training some dolphins at the same time as the "swim with" was going on. These are bottlenose dolphins. Debbie and Kelly, last Saturday, while snorkeling, happened upon a pod of about 30+ dolphins and were able to swim with them and get awesome pictures! This doesn't happen all the time, if at all. These were spinner dolphins. Slightly different than the bottlenose.
Then we walked home, ate lunch, and headed to the beach at "A" Bay which is nearby here. We had to change our itinerary a bit. We decided where to set our chairs, in a place where there weren't so many tourists. We picked a sloping beach area. We just wanted to sit for an hour or two and watch the ocean and surfers. Thankfully it was sloping because the waves came in quite high making us prop our bags and "slippah's" (Hawaiian flip flops) up in the bushes so they wouldn't float away or get wet in case the waves came up too high. There was one time it almost touched our chair legs! YIKES! It tide was coming in and the surf made the waves so much bigger.
Then we went home stopping at Starbucks first and spend a nice quiet evening there. I was going to go to the pool by myself, while Debbie made cookies, but there were so many kids and people there I didn't.
Yard work consists of trimming palm leaves!
Lava field
These bushes are all over.
See the yellow birds? All over here
Hard to see but cobwebs all over! Debbie says she hasn't seen this before.
Fish ponds
HIGH waves!
See the surfers?
The Hilton ... Well a part of it.
Have NOT seen one of these in the wild.
But you can get your pic taken with many of them for boo koo bucks.
Over the hump and down lots of stairs to the pool area.
See it? This is the most "ocean/beach" most here will ever see. By choice.
Pretty, yes. But artificial.
Still Hilton grounds!
Dolphin area.
Dolphin or shark??
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