Let me start out by saying that these are not my ideal conditions for travel, but that being said – it’s sort of nice to be able to wander around the Big Island without the crowds so we came back for a second trip before tourism is scheduled to re-open. We spent an afternoon at the Mauna Kea Beach Resort which has one of the most beautiful crescent sand beaches on the island and there was only one other family there.
The downside is that a lot of what we wanted to do was closed either because of the pandemic or because of the impending hurricane (which thankfully bypassed us completely). We look forward to dining at Merriman’s in Waimea and horseback riding in the Waipio Valley – but those will have to wait.
Our trip this time was super low key – I met with a couple of friends in Waimea, we explored some amazing backroads, and we swam with dolphins. Yes, you read that right! We swam with dolphins. This is usually something that is far outside of our budget but our daughter’s 9th birthday is in a few days and we had a great recommendation from our friends at the Kamuela Inn (highly recommended as your base while you are here – see my full post on Waimea/Kamuela for details ) that because of the pandemic, the rates for a swim with Dolphin Quest had been slashed for kama’aina (residents of Hawaii). We were able to do a 30 minute family swim with the dolphins and a trainer for right around $400 (usually $1600). It was awesome and an amazing pre-birthday present. I’ll write about it in a separate post. On the day we swam with dolphins, Hurricane Douglas was possibly going to hit Hawaii but as mentioned, it passed us by. Locals say it is the power of Mauna Kea that pushes the hurricanes away and meteorologists agree but for different reasons – but really, does that even matter?
On our last day in Kamuela, we even got to wake up to a 4.4 earthquake! The fun never stops on the Big Island! Pandemic! Hurricane! Earthquake! (thankfully the hurricane missed and there was no tsunami from the quake!)
We didn’t plan to come during a hurricane and Southwest Airlines cancelled our flight and extended our stay by a couple of days – which was a bit of a big expense we hadn’t anticipated. So, we rented a car for an additional two days and got an AirBnB near Hilo for the last two (unexpected) days of our last trip of the summer.