Email Elizabeththings to do in kona
Kona Maka’eo Walking Path and Community Garden
We found a sign at the Maka’eo Walking Path noting if we walked around the path 3 times, we’d surpass 2 miles of steps for the day. Oh, man, what did we do before we counted our steps and distances? Didn’t we just walk, by putting one foot in front of the other without any goal to reach a certain number of steps before the end of the day? How did we ever make it through the day back in those dark ages without this knowledge?
Apple knows. In fact, there is a way to turn off the STAND or BREATHE function on my Apple Watch but I’m too lazy to look for it. So, instead little irritations build. Further, I am irritated that it started with 5,000 steps and then lord knows who proclaimed, no, we must do 10,000 steps a day. Screw those people. And Apple, too. Don’t let your watch tell you what to do. Resist.
Reminds me of the story about running into Patricia Clarkson at Safeway in Kona and mistaking her for Cyndi Lauper.
If you are looking for a relaxing stroll without being forced to count your steps or maybe you want to run or jog, the Maka’eo Walking Path offers all of those options. The day we were there last week, it was fairly warm, middle of the afternoon, and not very many people on the paved path at all.
We spotted large numbers of mongooses runningamuck. Feral cats live in this community garden, too, but we didn’t see any.
It is a little difficult to find if you don’t know where the Maka’eo Walking Path is located, and GPS is not a lot of help. So here are my directions. Drive down Kuakini until it ends by the Old Pavillion. Park there. On the mauka side of the road, walk beyond the store with the sign that warns: no skateboarding, no camping, no loitering, no NOTHING, at the canoe place. Go north a little bit further past the skateboard park and you will find the Maka’eo Walking Path.
This is an Australian Fire Tree, which I believe I’ve also discovered in Golden Gate Park, except this is in Kona. There are many sections devoted to certain types of plants and cared for by individuals as well as non-profit organizations. Not as many flowers were in bloom this time of year, though.
We have been searching for a tall lipstick palm for our front yard since our gardener Charlie removed our pathetic dwarf avocado. His irrigation friend Alistaire seemed to think the avocado tree was diseased. The tips of the leaves had all turned brown, and this has been going for on years. Our local celebrity gardener Barbara Bolton said it might be because we watered it too much, and that 10 minutes a day every other day is too much.
Who knows why the avocado tree responded so negatively to the sun and sea air of our yard in Hawaii? Charlie found a front-yard replacement plant, a lipstick palm at Lowes, but he claimed $200 was too much to pay for a 4-foot palm. He assures us we could find at least a 7-foot lipstick palm for around $300.
These palms in the Maka’eo Walking Path are not lipstick palms, and I don’t think they are bottle palms, either. They could very well be Madagascar palms, originating from Madagascar, an island off the coast of southern Africa. Otherwise known as dragon trees.
The Vanillerie Tour in Kona Ends With Ice Cream
My friends at the Kona Haven Coffee group mentioned The Vanillerie tour in Kona a few weeks back, and I had forgotten about it. They were a little vague about where the place was located, saying it was past the turnoff for Costco. But after I read the reviews online among the list of things to do in Kona, I thought my husband would enjoy it during his stay.
At the beginning of the tour, Steve began the narration. We learned he has lived in Kona for 14 years and came here from Washington. It seems everybody we meet in Kona, if they were not born here, count their years like rings on a tree, and some with great pride. It’s always an announcement or a question about how long one has lived in Kona.
The people we bought our house from said residents are slow to warm to newcomers, always concerned they will make a close friend and then that friend will go back to the Mainland. With people my age, the greater concern is your new friend will DIE from OLD age. Honestly!
The Vanillerie tour in Kona starts with an introduction to the vanilla bean, which is actually an orchid. Not many people know this. Or if they knew it at one time, it’s escaped their now mature memory banks, or got shoved behind a bunch of boxes in the attic as information that has no bearing on your life when you live in, say, Minneapolis.
We discovered during the Vanillerie tour that vanilla beans need filtered and shaded light in a warm, humid area. What kind of weather is better than Kona? They must also be pollinated, which at the Vanillerie is done by hand. After you pick the beans, which takes about 3 years to mature, they are still alive, and they must be killed. Which they do with heat.
Then the vanilla beans go through a curing process, which involves sweating and drying.
As you can see on these trays, the vanilla beans on top are drying. The pieces in the containers below the top row are cut up with plans to make them into a vanilla powder.
After the Vanillerie tour in Kona, we returned to the gift shop, the building we first entered, to enjoy vanilla ice cream. They also sell vanilla extract and kits to make your own vanilla extract from vanilla beans. Just add alcohol, how easy is that?
Or you can buy a variety of vanilla products like scented candles or vanilla hand lotion. A little goes a long way with the hand lotion. I dribbled a teaspoon on my hands and tried to wipe off the excess on my husband, but he was having none of my shenanigans.
The tour is only $15 and well worth the visit. The reception area with the picnic tables can be transformed into a place for group lunches, celebrations or weddings.
The Vanillerie, 73-4301 Laui St, Kailua-Kona, Island of Hawaii, HI 96740-9010. 808.331.8535. 10 AM to 4 PM, 3 tours a day.
Mahai’lua Beach at Kekaha Kai State Park
You have to really want to visit Mahai’lua Beach to drive down the road to get there. To say the road is unimproved is to put it mildly. In fact, there is a sign about halfway down the road that warns you are entering an unimproved road, just in case you didn’t know. However, the road to the unimproved road is also unimproved, so it makes you wonder how much worse can it get.
Wasn’t bad in my Subaru SUV, but some of the people who care about their suspension (or maybe their kidneys) had turned around and headed back to the highway. It’s about a 15-minute drive, averaging somewhere between 5 and 10 miles per hour. But who is in a hurry? This is Hawaii! You’ll get to Mahai’lua Beach. Eventually.
Mahai’lua Beach is long and wide, with beautiful sand. This is not the most beautiful beach in the Kekaha Kai State Park. There is another beach, but it is a longer walk. From the parking lot, it is about a 1/2 mile walk to the beach, through a gate to a path.
Beyond that beach, you need to navigate another 1/2 mile over lava beds and lava rock to reach the most beautiful beach, known as Makalawena Beach. Best white sand beach in West Hawaii. But we did not reach that beach since it was already mid afternoon, and the walk in hot sun over lava did not appeal to my husband. But we will go there another day.
Waves were high and surf was up the day we were at Makai’lui Beach. We could watch the surfers way off in the distance patiently wait for the best waves. On occasion, there were sets of waves rolling on top of each other. I almost jumped in the water with all of my clothes on but then I realized after the beach, we had to stop at Wal-Mart to exchange a propane tank.
The sun must have made me dizzy because as I stood in line at Wal-Mart to pay for an exchange, I could have sworn the clerk kept talking about cocaine to the guy in front of me. I was thinking, hey, can’t she see I’m standing right here? She shouldn’t be discussing a cocaine transaction in the middle of the store.
When I shared this interaction with my husband, he began to parody JJ Cale’s song, Cocaine: if you want to grill meat, you’ve got to take her out, propane.
This is the same Hawaiian monk seal that we spotted in the small lagoon during our tour a few years ago of the Kona Natural Energy Laboratory. We have only two Hawaiian monk seals on the Big Island, and we found both of them this week at Mahai’lua Beach.
Fortunately, there are volunteers who put up signs and rope off the areas to keep tourists and beachgoers away from the Hawaiian monk seals. The monk seals are an endangered species and endemic to the islands, meaning they are found no place else in the world.
It is also possible to hike about 7 miles south to reach Kua Bay, another popular yet secluded location for a beach. At least Kua Bay is a place you can drive on a paved surface to reach.
The Best Beach in all of West Hawaii is Mauna Kea
Mauna Kea Beach Hotel has the best beach in all of West Hawaii hands down. Ask anybody. I can say that as a person who has swam at practically every single beach there is near Kona. The beach is white sugar sand, and it continues into the water as far as you can walk. The water is turquoise and a dozen shades of aqua, as well as warm and inviting.
At one point, Josh pointed to a dark spot in the water. Was it a honu? I swam after it, but it seemed to move. All of a sudden, my mind went to the turtle images Laura Dern conjured in the HBO series Enlightened.
There were not very many people on the beach, either. Our afternoon at the best beach in all of West Hawaii was absolutely perfect. Sure, I could have been cleaning the house or doing laundry or working on a blog, but I’d rather be at the beach. At the best beach in all of West Hawaii, I lounged on an oversized towel and chatted with a few clients on my cell. Where else in the world can you sell real estate in Sacramento when you’re sitting on the beach in Hawaii?
Jump in for a brisk swim or just float on your back. Life just doesn’t get any better than this. After swimming, we enjoyed a delicious lunch of salads and fish. Then we jumped into the water again. I also strolled the grounds of the Mauna Kea Hotel to find the 12th century buddha brought there by developer Laurance S. Rockefeller himself in 1965.
Below are photos from our afternoon. In a few, you can spot buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch and Vika carting boogie boards or lying in the sun. All of the resort beaches in Hawaii are open to the public.
Realtor Day Off at A-Bay Waikoloa, Hawaii
What should we do on our Realtor Day Off? Exclusive buyer’s agent Josh Amolsch and his fiancée, Vika, had several choices of things to do yesterday. That was their first full day visiting Adam and Elizabeth Weintraub at their house in Hawaii. With Labor Day approaching, and our fall market about to commence the week after, going to Hawaii sounded like an excellent plan. Choosing an activity was more difficult than putting together our game plan, though.
There are so many things to do on the Big Island. Last year I dragged my husband to my old haunts at The Marriott Waikoloa Beach north of Kona. We figured it was an experience Josh and Vika would appreciate as well.
The first stop was the free parking lot at the Lava Lava Beach Club where we would have lunch. Signs all over said No Beach Parking. People follow signs in Hawaii. OK, clarification: tourists do. This is one of my favorite spots for lunch. Although the menu has changed quite a bit. They used to feature lunch specials with a grilled fish platter, but no more.
When I say it is Realtor Day Off, I mean it was Thursday. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we Sacramento real estate agents take off for the day. But it means we might not be glued to our computer so much, and we try to slip in a little bit of fun. Look at how quiet and calm the view to the south appears. Not a big crowd for a Thursday.
After lunch involving sandwiches, salads, and I was lucky enough to get a Tahitian Limeaid, which was very good, we sauntered down the old ruins path. This is a paved path that leads to ancient ruins, plenty of tropical vegetation and the cats of the Waikoloa Canoe Club at Anaeho’omalu Bay. My favorite one-eyed cat was gone. Looked like a new litter.
We ended up at the beach in front of the Marriott. All beaches in Hawaii are public. These guys in front of us were fishing for halalu. These are juvenile akule or bigeye. At first I thought maybe they were catching the fish for bait but no. It was dinner. To feed their family. Fry up with a little oil, the guy said. And man, were they hauling them in. Hundreds. July and August are popular months to catch these little fish.
On our way back to Kona, I asked Adam to keep an eye out for traffic on the side of the road near the 82nd marker on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway. A few days back, I read in West Hawaii Today that tourists were stopping along the highway to observe a lava tube there. A million times I’ve driven that stretch and not noticed. WHT reported that some people crossed the highway by wandering into on-going traffic while looking at their phones.
The lava tube was created by the 1801 Huehue lava flow from Hualalai. Here I am crouching down while Adam shoots the tube. Can’t wait to see what we come up with to do today since Realtor Day Off is over.
