Hawaii’s Kona Coast: Stellar Snorkeling, Thrifty Condo Living, and Friends Everywhere We Look

I love the Kevin Bacon game, where you link any two people in the world in six connections or less. We never expected to play Six Degrees of Separation in Waimea, Hawaii, a foodie mashup of art galleries and paniolo cowboy culture tucked up in the misty green foothills on the north end of the Hawaii’s Big Island. But play we did, and who needs six links anyway? We did it in one link (twice!) all in the same marvelous meal at Merriman’s, one of the Big Island’s best restaurants. But first, we had to escape the Costco parking lot.

In terms of natural beauty, The Kona Coast is absolutely stunning – no wonder so many Seattle snowbirds head here for their winter escapes. When the influx of winter condo dwellers descends on this lovely tropical town, clogged intersections are the inevitable result and so we sat, stuck with other scowling shoppers, going nowhere. 

For condo stays of more than a few days like ours, the asphalt torture is a small price to pay. That’s because Big Island grocery store prices reach into the stratosphere, and in contrast Costco’s prices seem almost stateside normal. Good thing we had our rental, a snazzy black Jeep Grand Cherokee we nicknamed Darth. The new rig kept Padre the car guy occupied, so he only cursed a few times as we inched at a turtle’s crawl to freedom out the exit. 

For our first visit to the Big Island we opted for an inexpensive condo, Casa de Emedko, even though we love white sand, walkable beaches and knew we’d need to be farther north in the Kohala area for that (and pay more $, of course – more on Kohala Coast lodging and sights in the next post).  Several condos like ours line Al’li Drive south of downtown Kona. I used several sources to choose this one, the best of which was The Big Island: Revealed, by Andrew Doughty, which provides an exhaustive, accurate description of almost all of them (accurate, based on our experience, anyway). 

Our third-floor one-bedroom condo was tucked in the back corner of a v-shaped complex, with balconies oriented toward the ocean vistas. Pathways meandered through the condo’s lush landscaping down to two swimming pools, the largest saltwater one perched on the ocean’s edge. Residents gathered down by the rock wall each morning and again at dusk, to cheer the sunset from the same rock wall, which is emblazoned with intimidating warning signs: “Danger on the other side of this wall!” 

Didn’t need the sign to tell me that, as I sat with my Kona coffee each morning, mesmerized by enormous waves crashing and booming on the lava rocks down below. So no white sand beach, and we both wish there was somewhere other than Al’li Drive close by to take long walks. For about $120 a night, though, no real complaints on the retired folk’s part, and two great snorkeling spots on small white sand beaches are close by.

Big Island snorkeling lives up to its hype, even though my first attempt at Jacque Cousteau-inspired underwater photography didn’t quite pan out. Travel writer-types rave about the wonders of the GoPro, but I bet they didn’t take 25 beautiful photos of their own knees, like I did.

We boarded the Mantaraiv with our Seaquest crew, Captain Michael and Natalie, and three other passengers for a snorkel cruise down the Kona Coast to The Place of Refuge, and then Kelalakelua and the Captain Cook Monument. I chose Seaquest the way I usually do – by checking Tripadvisor, Cruise Critic, and other review sites. You won’t find Seaquest in the glossy ad brochures at the airport, probably because they don’t need to advertise much. This outfit is top-rated, deservedly so.

Padre the captain/former sailboat owner doesn’t snorkel, so he swapped sailing tales with Michael and Natalie while I headed under the waves to find the fish. I had high hopes of snapping a National Geographic-worthy photo of a turtle, reef shark, octopus, or other amazing sea critter, but just one problem: I was a real klutz with the GoPro thing, even though I read up on it the night before and Natalie tried her best to help. 

The camera blinked ‘low battery’ during our first snorkel stop, and Michael promptly said he planned to refund my rental fee, but the problem was mostly operator error, not equipment failure . I did swim with reef sharks (definitely not scary), a turtle (tucked under a rock), an octopus (looked like a rock) and more. The school of yellow tang I swam among looked exactly like the photo on the right, honest it did! 

Yellow tang may be the commoners of Hawaiian reef fish, but they seemed to like me and I loved them back – they look like tiny bursts of liquid sunshine, flitting this way and that. Another sight I attempted to photograph (but got my knees instead – duh) was the deep blue drop off at the very edge of the reef. It really did look exactly like the drop off in the movie Finding Nemo, just as Michael said it would. Turns out, the filmmakers used Kealakekua’s drop off as a model for the movie’s scary abyss, where Nemo was never supposed to go. I didn’t go there either, since all that gloomy deep blue darkness reminded me of Titanic’s final resting place – Davy Jones’s locker and all that. 

On our return cruise, Michael gave us a water-side view of Hawaiian history, as he took us close to –sometimes into – several shoreline caves and cliffs that have figured prominently in the history of Hawaiian culture. 

And about those degrees of separation…..I hear that Facebook is dead for millennials nowadays, but baby boomers still hang out there. Good thing we do, since a travel friend spotted my last post and sent a query: “Are you on the Big Island? So are we!”

We met Kia and her son Cooper on our Baltic cruise two years ago, when we toured Lithuania’s Curonian Spit National Park and bonded over books. I knew Kia was my kind of reader when I found out she had arranged a special tour while our ship stopped in St. Petersburg, Russia. We had both read and loved A Gentleman In Moscow, by Amor Towles, set in Moscow’s historic Metropol Hotel across from the Kremlin, during pre and post-WWII. 

Kia and Cooper drove to Moscow just to visit the actual hotel, including its ballroom, a key location for important events in the story. If it hadn’t been our first visit to St. Petersburg, I would have loved to tag along to Moscow just to see that amazing room. I know, I know, the story was fiction. but it COULD have happened – who knows, maybe it did? Real readers like Kia and I don’t care – just ask all those tourists headed with us to visit the Hobbit House in a couple weeks. 

So Kia and I have kept in touch ever since (thank you, Facebook), and we met up in Waimea for lunch. Turns out that they have made winter pilgrimages to the Kona Coast for years. Husband/dad Jeff, wasn’t on the Baltic cruise, so we finally got to meet ‘the elusive husband’, as Kia called him. They knew all the best Big Island places, and gave us a tour of the swank Westin Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel (as well as more books….the best kind of friend!). At Merriman’s we dined on delicious prawns and perfectly grilled catch-of-the-day, while we caught up on all the latest happenings in all our lives. 

And I did say we played and won the Six Degrees of Separation game twice, didn’t I? That’s because when our waitress Leila asked where we were from and we said “Port Orchard” her face took on a stunned expression before she replied, “I grew up there – on Mile Hill Road – I graduated from South Kitsap High.” That’s about a mile from our place.

Small world, indeed. I always liked the cheezy It’s a Small World After All Disney ride, even though the song morphs into an annoying earworm nightmare after awhile. I liked it because I’d emerge from the ride’s doll-size interior (and all those dolls), singing along and loving the whole world, if only for a moment. Travel feels like that sometimes, and this was one of those moments.  

The separateness in this vast world of ours collapses and the connections between humans, rather than the divisions, help us remember how connected we are to everyone else who inhabits this huge planet along with us. One of the very best things about our world wanderings, no question, turns out to be the amazing people we’ve been fortunate enough to get to know all over the world, in addition to the folks who grew up right next door, like our waitress Leila. 

So on we go! In the next few days we’ll go off-roading down to the floor of Waipio Valley; take petroglyph hikes over moonscape lava rock; walk white sand beaches and check out some cool Hawaiian history (Hawaiians sacrificed a LOT of people to the gods, we know that much). We also have a first-timer’s Kona Coast review of lodging areas and a few of our favorite restaurants, so stay tuned! 

Thanks as always, for following along, everyone.