To be or not to be...

So I just got back from my family’s vacation to Hawaii, and it was a really good trip.  While most people stay in Waikiki or Honolulu on the island of Oahu, we stayed in Waikoloa, on the big island.  It was cool, much more provincial, with small towns that were at least a half-hour’s drive away from each other.  My parents have this cool time-share, so we stayed in a huge “hotel room” that had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, a living room, and a dining room.  Yeah, it was pretty much a small apartment, and the kitchen/washing machines helped us save a lot of money. 

The weather was nice; it was hot, but manageable.  We spent nearly everyday in the pool or on the beach.  The pool was at the hotel (we were at the condo buildings), but we could use their facilities for free.  And man, this was the biggest pool I had ever seen.  It had three bridges to get across it, waterfalls, and a water slide.  In addition to the pool, the hotel has a lagoon area that lets water in right from the ocean (which is right next to the pool, by the way).  So there was this lake right in the middle, where you could rent canoes and aquabikes and snorkels and stuff.  It was a ton of fun, and it’s needless to say that I’m significantly darker.

We also had the privilege of swimming with dolphins and watching them do tricks.  We even got to kiss the dolphin, right on the lips.  I wasn’t really feeling it, but let’s just say that I think I’ve got somebody in Hawaii who’s really going to miss me, hahaha.  We did some hiking down a mountain to a black-sand beach, which was pretty fascinating and different, seeing a beach like that.  The sand comes from broken down lava rock.  When the lava hits the water, the mix of that hot and cold shatters the drying lava into sand.  We also got to see the active volcano (which was pretty much just steam) and we got to do some lava rock hiking to be able to see from afar, lava flowing into the ocean (which from our view, was just steam).

So overall, it was an excellent trip, and we took home a ton of shortbread cookies, macadamia nuts, and Kona coffee to prove it.  The only thing disappointing was that because it was more provincial and less city-like, I saw a bunch of tourists and not very many locals.  By locals, I mean the mixed Asian girls you all know I like, haha.  But it was really good to get away from my thoughts for a bit to try to relax and hang loose (can I say that with no pun intended?).  I was actually really bummed out to be coming back.  I watched the beautiful rows of lights from the plane window as we were landing, and it just seemed like all my thoughts had punched me in the face.  Life is real again.  Aloha, indeed.

A picture of the pool, stolen from flickr.