Eating our way thru Hawaii - part 2

Aloha again! Back to my favourite topic - FOOD!!

Breakfast at the Volcano Village's My Island B&B was sumptuous and wholesome. They had cereals, cakes, breads, fruits, yoghurt, muffins, and also this delicious hawaiian papaya eaten the hawaiian way - with a twist of lime, pineapples and macadamia nuts.


Hilo farmer's market had these pineapples for sale. SOOOOO tempted to cart one back to Singapore!! But resisted!!


When we were shopping for water in Kona, guess what we found?


In Waimea, we had dinner at Daniel Thiebaut's famous restaurant. The seared ahi/tuna was really good.



Still in Waimea, we were so tired of thinking of what to eat next so we stumbled into this new restaurant that had just replaced one in the same location.



In the end, we did get soft and started to yearn for some Chinese cooking. We all know what Chinese food standards are like in a foreign country, so we settled for Thai. It wasn't half bad too. Wish we had asked for extra spicy green curry because it was more sweet than anything.


Geocaching! How else would we have found American's Southernmost Winery?!?

After we completed the cache (priorities!), we went for a tasting and loved their interesting blends like Hawaiian Guava and Macadamia Nut Honey. Bought a few bottles to share with friends back home.
They only opened at 10am so we had to wait around for a bit...




I'm not sure why but when we're on tour, ice cream was a not-so-rare treat!! We tried all sorts.




After 2 weeks under the hot hawaiian sun, cloudless skies, walking on lava with no tree shades, I think I look almost Hawaiian already.


The hot and dry weather in Kona was starting to get to us. Thankfully we ate at Merriman's Market Cafe and had a really great lunch, al-fresco style. The cold watermelon gazpacho soup was refreshing.


Coffee isn't one of America's strongest drinks. Starbucks is everywhere and we know what that's like. But Kona coffee is world famous and everywhere we go, we see signs proclaiming that they have Original Kona Coffee.


For our last few nights on the Big Island, we stayed at a coffee plantation Mango Sunset B&B and the owner (Hans Eckert) gave us a really comprehensive tour. Kona coffee must be grown on rocky volcano slopes, ripened on the tree, and handpicked.

This guy does everything himself! We were really impressed when he told us that he had bought some massive equipment and was going to assemble it himself. He seems to run the whole B&B and farm by himself.

Breakfast at the farm - lazing on the lanai with cereal, milk and fried mushrooms...


..looking out at the coffee plantation (we spotted some wild boars - oh dear..) and in the distance, the airport.. not looking forward to going back to work..

Eating our way thru Hawaii - part 1

Our first over-seas meal was on a JAL flight to Narita. The food was served on a mini 'HOT PLATE' under the main course! That was thoughtful of them... even if the seats were pretty cramped in the Made-in-Japan plane. ugh...


Arriving at Narita, we bought some snacks at Narita-San and had the BEST soft Green Tea ice cream at the airport!


We couldn't resist those cute cakes and the 1001 varieties of ice coffee with milk/without milk/ with milk and sugar/ with milk no sugar...


The food in Hawaii wasn't anything to shout about. Mostly cholesterol-laden artery clotting burgers and steaks in green-giant portions! We tried to order moderately healthy food but sometimes we didn't have much choice.

At the Volcano Village, lunch was real sinful - burger and fried chicken, plus I ordered a chocolate milkshake! *Gasp* And a dinner takeout of Chicken Caesar Wrap to bring along for our volcano lava hike. The salad kept blowing off in the strong wind, so we only had the wrap for dinner.


Sometimes though, it was 'worth the sin', like this little restarant called Jolene's at Honokaa with really nice mushroom burgers. The cheese was droopy around the sides which is how I love it. But the coffee tasted like instant Nescafe. ugh...

A place called the Noodle Shack was supposed to have won some awards but we figure it must've been a L O N G time ago... and it served us some pretty dubious looking meat. You'd have to be pretty hungry to be able to finish all this!


Somewhat closer to fine-dining but still a little ways off, Kilauea Lodge. The Prime Rib was quite good but the grilled Ahi (tuna) was a bit tough.


Singapore Rotary club was there too!


The thickest smoothies can be found at What's Shakin' near the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. It takes that much energy to suck on the straws! Their secret - they use frozen bananas! They also serve nice sandwiches with organic vegetables and fruits.


At Seaside Restaurant in Hilo, I ordered a Steamed Mullet wrapped in Ti. It shocked us when it was served because it was huge! Mag ordered teriyaki chicken as she isn't a fan of fish.


Back in Kona, we had pretty decent Japanese at Kenichi Pacific.
Service was slow but the fish was really fresh.

We had a saketini drink called Hello Kitty! Meeeowwww....!!

Swimming in Hawaii

Snorkelling is something that is NOT TO BE MISSED when holidaying in Hawaii! Can you imagine telling people you've gone to Hawaii but have not done any snorkelling? There are SOOOO many beaches along the Kona coast where the water is clear and corals attract schools of colourful fishes and sea turtles!!

We went snorkelling a total of 3 times - wish we could do MORE!! sigh..

First was at Kahalu'u Beach where a HUGE sea turtle actually flipped me on the calf! I thought it was a man with flippers and was very amused when I found out that it was a turtle. These creatures are HUGE!! Hold out your arms and make an oval and that's how big the turtles are. I imagine they must be hundreds of years old.

Plus they're fast too! With our bulky disposable underwater cameras, it was impossible to get a good shot of the turtles, so here you have the backside of one that didn't quite get away.

The water was very choppy here so both Mag and I had a bit of problem finding our footing. Thank goodness for our aqua shoes. Can't leave home without them! Got mine at Beach Road for $20.

It was very crowded and almost every spot on the sand was taken. Being Singaporeans, we chose one that was under shade. hehe.. We still got chao-tar/BURNT(!) but no reason for our bags to get toasted too, right!!

Views of the beach, pointing at a turtle's head, an anorexic girl and surfers nearby...


A few days later, we had another short stop for snorkelling at Two-Step (Place of Refuge). I still haven't figured out why it's called Two-Step. There were MORE fishes here and the water was clearer.



Mag took so long to acclimatise to the cold water. By the time she joined me, I had already finished using up our 1st (of 2) underwater camera :Þ

Here's Mag showing us the shaka sign which we found out later should be shown palm-in rather than palm-out.





FASHION POLICE ALERT! OMG... talk about mismatched colours! LOL..

Can you see the black lava we're standing on? It's like this all over this place/shore. In contrast, underwater there is a burst of colours! Corals and anemone flourish. Colourful fishes swim in to feast on the plankton.

In between snorkelling, we also visited some pretty interesting beaches. The MOST inaccessible must have been Green Sand Beach. It's near South Point but you have to park and walk for about 2 hours each way. Even if you had a 4WD, the terrain is still terrrrrrible and you would probably be knocked around alot in the car.


We had a scruffy little doggy companion who trotted along with us as we walked to Green Sand Beach. I'll post about him another day.

Now why did Mag want to change into her swimming costume here? We only had like 15mins to see the tiny tiny beach before we skooted off to our next destination...

A resting turtle on Black Sand Beach:



Hidden somewhere in Puna, there is Ahalanui Park - a beach park with a pond heated by volcanic steam. It was just lovely to soak in the warm water. Not sure how much bacteria is harbouring down there. Let's just hope we didn't stay there long enough for anything to take root! There was a family of tiny crabs living around the banks. How's that for hygiene? hehe...



After we found Over the Rainbow Falls geocache, we thought(!) we could take a dip in one of the still pools that looked soooo inviting. Yeah right! We didn't count on them being so freezing cold!!

Well, we did get our feet wet. Little fishes thought I was food!! And that's as far as I got - my hips! LOL...


Hapuna Beach

The WINNER of BEST BEACH on the Big Island has to go to Hapuna Beach!

This kind of beach makes you wanna just throw off your clothes in a pile, run on the soft white sand and throw yourself into the crashing waves.

The water is turquoise, clear, and very calm with just enough rolling waves to play in.




I must say, we saved the best (snorkelling) for last! The day we visited Captain Cook's Monument must have been one of the most memorable day of the holiday. We rented a kayak right at the waters (no need to transport on car roof) and we paddled across the bay to the monument. The guide books say that spinner dolphins sometimes appear and would swim with your kayak but we never saw any.

Here I am trying to imitate a Petroglyph figure. This is sort of a kayak-parking area. Everyone just docks here and drags their kayak up so that it doesn't get pulled back into the sea.

The monument reads, "In memory of the great circumnavigator, Captain James Cook, R.N., who discovered these islands on the 18th of January A.D 1778 and fell near this spot on the 14th of February A.D. 1779. This monument was erected in November A.D. 1874 by some of his fellow countrymen".

The water here is just amazingly clear!




Beyond the corals, looking out, all you can see is Deeep Blue Sea...


Someone told us you could break off one of these red tips from the sea urchin and write with them. Ha! Not gonna try that!!


Here's a shaka done the right way! ;-) and underwater, of course!