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Moving Day We started Tuesday with a walk to Aki’s for breakfast. We enjoyed the usual delicious food and all of the comings and goings that passed by us. On our walk home we watched a man climb high up in the coconut palms outside of the Hulihe’e Palace and cut off old fronds sending them cascading below where a fellow worker hauled them off. We had a noon check out time so we didn’t dawdle too much on the way. Back at the hotel, we packed up and said farewell to our room and the birds that always visited our lanai and serenaded us with shrill soprano squawks and dulcet alto coos in counterpoint to the bass roar of the surf. We headed down the coast to Keauhou. After we checked into the Ohana Keauhou Resort, a personable young Hawaiian kane (man) helped us with our bags and we spoke about the sports rivalry between University of Hawaii and University of Oregon. Room 501 was a beautiful bright corner room with two walls of windows and sliding louvered doors that moved completely out of the way of the glass. Unfortunately they had a huge console with the television in the corner where the two windows met blocking that view. It had a good bed, better than the Royal Kona, a good view from the fifth floor of the tide pool down below us but the thunderous sound of the surf was hundreds of yards offshore beyond the reef rather than a few yards away. I was captivated by the brilliant colors in the lagoon, incredible aquas and sea greens against the dark blues of the ocean beyond the breakwater and the black lava rocks and we tried to capture them with our cameras. We went off to check out Keauhou. We found a large and new shopping center with a KTA market, Long’s Drugs, Ace Hardware and a multi-plex movie theatre which had also just stopped showing "The Return of the King". There were a couple of restaurants and other smaller shops as well. We bought our first papaya, a mango, fresh pineapple junks and a bunch of apple bananas (smaller than regular bananas with a tasty tang to them) at the KTA along with more drinking water and a bottle of sake. Back at the room, John relaxed into his book and I went out with my camera and explored some of the grounds. I was particularly taken with the magnificent trees and tropical plants. I didn’t have names for any of them; they were foreign to me but they inspired me with their beauty. The newness of Hawaii’s splendor woke the artist and lover in my soul and my camera became my brush and my ode. I was drawn to an intimate little green area with a private bench and a fresh water spring known as puna wai, which according to legend was believed to be a fertility pit. The tennis courts were lined with colorful hibiscus flowers and bougainvillea vines while very inviting hammocks looked out over the serene view of the turquoise waters of the lagoon. This area had also been a heiau, or temple, and the royal women came here to give birth so that the child would be imbued with the great mana and spiritual power of the place. I tried to get shots of some of the colorful fish in the lagoon, schools of yellow ones with black tiger stripes, dark blue ones dotted with white and yellow, white and black angel fish. I came back to the room to share the sunset with John. As dusk approached, at least half a dozen sea turtles climbed up onto the rocks just below our lanai. I was really taken with the sea turtles. On land they move cumbersomely but in the water they are such graceful swimmers. They feel like a connection to ancient times. We had dinner at the hotel and it was a disappointment. We both ordered the same dish, linguine with shrimp and scallops. Someone in the kitchen must’ve been a little tipsy because John got most of the linguine and I got most of the shrimp and scallops. For the hefty price, the food was also fairly tasteless. After eating we walked around the grounds and sat for a time on a bench watching the moths, bats and occasionally an owl do their spiraling dance in the bright lights that the hotel had illumining the lagoon and ocean beyond it. We missed our nightly walk into Kailua after dinner so we walked out on Ali’I Drive almost up to the shopping center and back. We had a peaceful sleep but the ocean surf sounded too distant.
We had been spoiled at the Royal Kona.
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