Our First 24 Hours in Paradise

Well, we finally arrived in Kona at 1:00 AM. We slept most of the way from San Francisco, but we certainly were tired when we got off the plane. Off to the Thrifty Rent A Car building to pick up our car. Many thanks to Thrifty because the clerk learned the four of us had 7 pieces of luggage, she upgraded us to a Dodge Caravan. That was great!

The van came with a simple GPS navigation system, so we had no problem making our way from the airport to our vacation rental in Keauhou - just south of Kona - even at 2:00 in the morning. A quick unpacking of our suitcases, and we went to sleep. 29 hours after we woke up in Winnipeg.

Saturday morning we woke up and headed to check out our corner of paradise. Here are Tim and Jody on the lanai:

And here are Dona and Tim in the dining room:

Temperatures when we woke up in the morning were +20C, with a forecast of sunny and +29C that day. Ah yes.

We had breakfast at Sam Choy's, a restaurant close to our house with a magnificent view of the ocean. Way off in the distance we could see a couple pods of humpback whales, playfully flapping their tails on the surface. Here's Jody taking a picture just outside the restaurant;

We headed into Kona, did some shopping, and stopped at the dive shop (Big Island Divers) to book our dives. We stopped to sample some Kona coffee at a little coffee shop, and stumbled on the Kona Inn, with a beautiful view of the ocean:

We stopped at the farmers market to pick up some fresh produce, and bought our groceries. $5.47 for a four-litre jug of milk, $25/kg for top sirloin steak. Yeah we knew Hawaii would be expensive for food. But the pineapple! It had to have been picked just that morning. It was so sweet and fresh. Wow!

We had a barbecued steak dinner back at the house, and enjoyed the company of our friends. This place is amazing!