whirlwind tour of the Big Island

After several relaxing days in Maui, we headed to the Big Island for the rest of the week. I'd read my Big Island Revealed guidebook thoroughly before arriving, and had planned out an ambitious itinerary.

We arrived mid-afternoon and picked up our rental car. We had originally booked a compact, but the tourbook "strongly suggested" a 4x4, so we paid an extra $100 or so to upgrade to a Jeep Wrangler. Best decision ever.

After stopping by our hotel in Keauhou, we headed down the coast to South Point. It was super windy there, so all the trees were leaning over:


When we reached the coast, we tried to find the famous green sand beach, but after 20+ minutes of pretty extreme off-roading, we hadn't found it and the sun was starting to go down, so we gave up and just admired the sunset while driving back:


On the way home, we stopped by Annie's Island Fresh Burgers for dinner. They closed at 8pm, and by the time we arrived it was already 7:30pm, but they were super nice and the burgers were amazing. I had "Steakhouse Burger" which was topped with mushrooms, gorgonzola and arugula, and D had the "Fresh Catch Wasabi Sandwich" which was a fish sandwich on sourdough with wasabi sauce and onion rings inside. I don't remember the name of the actual fish, but D said it tasted kind of like butterfish.

The next day, our primary goal was to explore Volcanoes National Park. Since we knew it would be a long drive, we got up at 6am and were on the road by 7am.

First we stopped by Punalu'u, another black sand beach. It was less impressive this time since we'd already seen one in Maui, but still really pretty:


We arrived at the park well before noon, and drove all around the open parts of the summit area:



It kept raining on and off, but we decided to try a hike anyway. We parked our car at the Kilauea Iki Lookout and headed into the crater on the Kilauea Iki Trail.


The trail wraps around the right side of the crater rim before descending onto the crater floor:


It showered on us a couple of times, but it was so warm that we dried off pretty fast. It was a fun hike, and only a couple of hours long, so afterwards we grabbed a quick lunch at a tiny cafe in the town of "Volcano" and then proceeded onward to Hilo.

I had two primary objectives in Hilo; to buy cookies and candies from Big Island Candies, and to buy mochi from Two Ladies Kitchen. We accomplished both.

Our stop at Big Island Candies was super-efficient; it looked like they were used to tour groups, they had tons of samples, and we quickly decided on several boxes of Mac Nut Crunchies, a few bags of the famous chocolate caramel dipped shortbread, and some of the new toffee candies. I also liked the Kona coffee cookies but the bags were too big and looked too crushable to take home, so I passed on that. The salesladies were super nice and kept pushing more samples at me while trying to talk to me in Japanese. They seemed a bit confused when I replied in English but continued to encourage me to "try! try this!".

Our experience at Two Ladies was totally different. It was New Year's Eve and they were technically closing early at 3pm, but when we arrived at 3:45pm the door was still open, so we went in anyway. We tried to place an order but at first the guy behind the cash register said they were closed. We then tried to buy a pre-boxed assortment anyway, and as we were trying to get that rung up, a girl came out of the kitchen and said that they'd accept our order. We quickly scanned the menu and picked out eight flavors, waited until the cashier had helped another two or three customers (the place was crazy busy), and tried to place our order. It turned out they were out of a few flavors, so we tried again. In fact, we tried like three or four times, each time waiting in line again, and by the time we got and paid for our order, we'd been there for over half an hour. Some of the flavors that we either attempted to order or ended up getting were: lilikoi (aka passionfruit), peach, plum, sweet potato, daifuku, tsumami, chiso, yomogi (some kind of leaf), kamato, peanut butter, and brownie. The whole time, I was impatient to leave because I wanted to hit a few more sights in Hilo before heading back to the volcano, so I was totally not appreciating the super-chill super-slow Hawaiian mode of operation. Later when we were eating the delicious strawberry red bean mochi in the car, I grudgingly decided it had been worth the wait after all. In fact, D says he may be spoiled for mochi forever.

Despite the delay, we did manage to stop by nearby Rainbow Falls before leaving Hilo:


From Hilo, it was about an hour drive to the lava flow viewing area at Kalapana. There were warning signs recommending 4x4 a few minutes out, but it wasn't really necessary, and right at the end we were directed to park and walk. It was only half a mile from the parking lot to the barricaded area, but it was a bit treacherous walking across the solidified lava, so the USGS had marked out a safe trail:


The lava was amazing. We got right up to about ten feet away, and could see clearly as the orange extrusions appeared, grew, and then cooled off and became dark grey and solid. There was a security guard there but he was super nice; he helped people get close-up photos with their cameras, poked at the lava with a stick to show us how hard it was, and answered lots of random questions. He explained that the part of the lava that we were standing on was only three days old, and that typically tourists were not allowed to get this close to the lava flow, but luckily the USGS had recently come by and certified a safe path for us.

We stayed for a good hour and a half, until after sunset. As the sun went down, it was easier to see all the glowing bits of orange everywhere, but it got harder to take photos:





As we were standing there looking at the lava, I recognized a former coworker of mine! She used to do marketing for my team's project, but had left to join a startup, and I hadn't seen her for several years. She had apparently gotten married as she was there with her husband, but otherwise looked much the same. Small world, indeed.

On our last full day in Hawaii, we decided to make good use of our Jeep yet again. First we drove up to Waipi'o Valley, on the north side of the island. The drive there was pleasant, but from the overlook it was a mile down a 25% grade mud/dirt road with multiple switchbacks, followed by a flat part covered in giant mud puddles. I was seriously afraid we were going to drown the engine, but we did make it to the beach, and it was very relaxing and peaceful there:



After getting back to the top, we first stopped by Tex's Drive In in Honokaa for some malasadas (Portuguese doughnuts), and then at Hawaiian Style Cafe in Kamuela for a real lunch. I ordered a Kalua pig hash and D had a combo plate of honey fried chicken and kalbi. When we saw the food we realized our mistake. Either we should have saved the malasadas for later, or we should have shared one dish. Despite being quite cheap, the portions were huge, and came with lots of sides (mac salad, fried potatoes, and more). We ended up taking half of the food to go, and headed for the Saddle Road.

The Saddle Road sits between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea and links Kona and Hilo. The guidebook said that it was not in very good shape, but I think it must have been paved since then, because we had no problems at all. About halfway down the road, we turned towards Mauna Kea, heading for the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy.

The summit of Mauna Kea is at an elevation of almost 14,000 feet, is a dry environment, and has stable airflow. As a result, it is one of the best sites in the world for astronomical observation, and there are thirteen world-class observatories up there, funded by eleven different countries.

Ellison Onizuka was an astronaut who was born and raised in Kona. He successfully completed a mission on the Space Shuttle Discovery before being killed later in the Challenger explosion. The Onizuka Center is named for him. We stopped there at the Visitor Information Station, where we inquired about the best way to approach the summit. We knew that we were required to have a 4x4 vehicle, but they also gave us a detailed map and told us that if we could catch up to the tour which had left just ten minutes prior, we could see the inside of the Keck Observatory.

We started up the gravel road, which didn't seem that steep to me, but we had a hard time keeping up a decent speed, and D said the Jeep would fishtail from time to time. About a mile and a half in, it started beeping and flashing "hot oil". I told D to pull over, we turned off the A/C, waited 5-10 minutes, and started again. This time we made it up to about mile 4 before the beeping began. Again we waited a few minutes, and this time we were able to hit the pavement at mile 5 and make it up the rest of the way to mile 8.

The view at the top was breathtaking:


It was also really, really cold at 40 degrees, plus wind chill. Luckily we had both brought fleeces, windbreakers, and I had a scarf. We'd lost the tour on our way up, so when we got to Keck I (there are two Keck observatories), we had to bang on the door to get them to let us in. (They did.)

The tour guides showed us the telescope and talked about a lot of the new techniques used to optimize the images, such as adaptive optics using deformable mirrors.


We then went outside and they talked about the different organizations/countries which had funded each of the telescopes, and even a little bit about the history and geology of Mauna Kea. Towards the end I got really cold and retreated inside the car, but even then I enjoyed the view.


After the tour we slowly descended back to the visitor center at 9,000 feet. We kept stopping along the way to take photos, and we noticed other tourists copying us, too. The scenery was really spectacular:





Back down at the visitor center, we attended a talk given by a lecturer from the University of Hawaii (Hilo) about his work with adaptive optics. It was fascinating, but sadly half of the audience left early. On the bright side, the other half of the audience was super-engaged, asked a lot of really informed questions, and a few had brought their own telescopes (!!). As the talk ended, we were directed outside to where a bunch of telescopes had been set up to look at various astronomical objects. I was most impressed by the four visible moons of Jupiter, since I've seen a lot of the constellations before.

We spent our last morning at the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau Place of Refuge. Apparently back in the old days, if a Hawaiian broke a "kapu" (law), he/she could avoid punishment by running/swimming to the nearest place of refuge. An offender who managed to reach such a place would be purified and officially forgiven by a priest. Hmm.

Anyway, Pu'uhonua o Honaunau was one of the most sacred of these places of refuge, and today it's been made into a kind of outdoor museum to teach visitors about ancient Hawaiian culture. I'm not sure we learned all that much there, but it's a pretty place and is a good deal (like everything else in Hawaii) at $5:



From there we were off to the airport. When we got to the rental car return, the Budget rep actually asked us for a gas receipt! That was a first for me. Luckily we actually had filled up just a few miles away, so we didn't have to pay any penalty charges. Whew!

first time in Maui

After Christmas, D and I flew to Maui to meet up with my sister and her husband, who were coming from Taiwan. None of us had ever been to Maui before, so we did quite a few touristy things.

D and I didn't arrive until early afternoon on the first day (due to Alaska Airlines jacking us and rescheduling our flight for three hours later), so we only really had a few hours of daylight after stopping by Costco to pick up food supplies, including my favorite sweet potato and taro chips.

We decided to drive up the coast past Kapalua, and made it to the Nakalele Blowhole before turning back:


The next day we drove up to the Haleakela Crater and hiked the Sliding Sands trail:



It was pretty and not strenuous, but very very windy, so we were glad we'd brought our windbreakers.

We were all hungry by the time we started heading home, so we stopped by Da Kitchen on the way home. Their specials board was covered with different variations of "moco", and in the end I went with "chili moco" (with beef chili) and D ordered "katsu moco" (with chicken cutlet). We topped that off with an appetizer of fried spam musubi. Initially we'd ordered four dishes for the four of us, but luckily the waitress forgot one, as each order was probably enough to feed three regular people (or two Hawaiians).

On day three, we drove the famous "Road to Hana". It was very lush and beautiful with lots of waterfalls and other sights to admire. However, one of our favorite parts of the drive was all the little food stands selling tasty snacks like coconut candy, homemade beef jerky, and really good banana bread. We decided Twin Falls had the best taste (not too sweet) but Halfway to Hana had the best texture, with big chunks of gooey banana. Yum.



We were going at a pretty leisurely pace so we didn't make it past Hana, but we did get to hang out for awhile at the Waianapanapa black sand beach. We were completely fascinated by the sand, which varied between black pebbles and very very fine black sand:


We also amused ourselves watching people jumping off rocks. It seems to be a common pastime in Hawaii:


For dinner we went to Lahaina Grill, which is one of the nicest restaurants in Maui, but of course there were still people in flip-flops. Ah, Hawaii. The food was pretty good but not super impressive, and the noise level was quite high, especially by the bar area, but the Mai Tais were delicious.

D and I went on a whale watching trip with Pacific Whale Foundation on the morning of on the fourth day. It was an amazing trip; in addition to several whales, we also spotted a 10 or 12-foot long tiger shark:


One of the whales got so close (within 100 meters) that the captain had to cut power to the boat:




We met up with the other two for lunch at the nearby Pacific'O Restaurant, where the food was again fine but not spectacular, but the view was very nice; we could even watch the beginning surf classes as we ate.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy; we had planned to go to a beach to hang out, but it was really hot outside and really comfy in our condo, so we mostly just sat around snacking on pounds of Foodland poke, occasionally venturing out to downtown Lahaina to check out the art galleries or to eat shave ice. D had two large orders of shave ice from Ululani's that afternoon, and he paid for it by having a terrible sugar crash afterwards.

We were all leaving around noon on the last day, so we only really had time to have brunch. I chose the Gazebo Restaurant, which is a tiny place inside the Napili Shores condo complex that has a fabulous view overlooking the water:


I was actually quite impressed with the food too; my sister and I split pancakes with bananas, mac nuts, and white chocolate chips (yummy), plus a "half portion" of fried rice (again, enough to feed two), her husband had a burger, and D had a crab melt (delicious!).

Afterwards we hung out on the shore, and discovered the water was teeming with sea turtles! We watched them riding up and down on the waves for quite some time, before we were forced to leave for the airport.

almost full recovery

Two days ago, we were eating dinner at home when D got this funny look on his face.

me:	What?
D:	I just realized I accidentally deleted half of my Hawaii photos from the SD card when I was deleting older photos.
me:	::speechless for a couple of seconds::
me:	Um, okay. Let me see what I can do.

I spent the next 2-3 hours looking at free file recovery programs. First I tried Undelete Plus, which was able to successfully recover deleted .JPG files, but all of the extracted .NEF files were corrupted. It was the same story with Pandora Recovery. Finally I discovered PC Inspector Smart Recovery. "Quick Scan" failed, so I had to run "Thorough Scan", which took over 18 hours on the 16GB SD card. In the end it recovered over 1000 files, only about 10 of which are unusable. Vacation photos saved!

eating well in Hawaii (days 3, 4, & 5)

I think when I left off last time, it was mid-September, and we'd been eating up a storm in Honolulu for two days...

We woke up on the morning of day 3 (Friday) and decided to road trip it to the North Shore, to see if we could see some surfing. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and there were no waves:


So, we just hung out at Waimea Bay Beach Park for awhile. While we were there, one of our friends joined the many people (mostly teenagers and kids) jumping off of a large nearby rock:


We consoled ourselves with some shave ice from Matsumoto's (not quite as impressive second time around) and prawns from Romy's (still fresh and delicious):


After eating, we drove all the way around the island, stopping from time to time to enjoy the views:


Towards the evening, we ventured into Kailua, where we picked up some "chocolate jump cake" from Agnes' Portuguese Bakeshop (looks too sweet to eat but isn't; it's deliciously chocolate-y), and then drove all the way around on the Kalaniana'ole Highway, passing by Diamond Head again on our way back into Honolulu.

For dinner, we went to the Coco Ichiban Curry House, a chain serving only Japanese curry:


We tried the takoyaki, the fried chicken, and the gyoza, but didn't have room for more than that. So simple, so cheap, so yummy. If only they would open a curry house in the Bay Area!

Afterwards we happened upon a street fair on Kalakaua Street, and wandered around watching the performers and smelling all the street food that we couldn't possibly manage to eat:


We met up with some friends from Honolulu at the Westin Moana Surfrider (at their suggestion), where we sat in the lounge catching up and having a few drinks. Very nice hotel and excellent table service, but I'm guessing way out of budget for our trip.

The wedding wasn't until 4pm on Saturday, so we slept in, for once. At the street fair the night before, we had been very surprised to see a sign for Okonomiyaki Chibo at one of the stands. Last year in Osaka a Japanese friend had taken us to Chibo for dinner and we had enjoyed it very much, so we stopped by to inquire, and it turned out that they had just opened a restaurant in a nearby mall, the Royal Hawaiian Center. Of course, we ended up there for lunch, and it was delicious. I've decided I prefer the kind of okonomiyaki where they put noodles into the batter and it turns out a bit crispy.

After walking around for a bit and enjoying a very fruity mango shave ice, we headed to Kaka`ako Waterfront Park for the ceremony. Despite being mid-September, it was sweltering hot that day, especially for the guys in their suits and tuxes. It was a beautiful and intimate outdoor ceremony, but shortly afterwards, during the downtime before the reception, we decided we just had to have some more shave ice (to fight the heat, naturally).

This time we headed to the highly reviewed Waiola Shave Ice:


We had the "Azuki Bowl", which came with milk flavor, azuki beans, and mochi balls. It was very good but reminded me more of Chinese or Japanese dessert than Hawaiian shave ice. A friend added green tea flavor to her bowl and it basically ended up tasting like a modified version of the Japanese dessert of green tea ice cream with red beans.

After finishing our second shave ice of the day, we had just enough time to drive to the reception, which was at the DAV Hall, in Ke'ehi Lagoon Park. At this point I'd been in Hawaii for four days and hadn't actually eaten any real Hawaiian food (except taro chips and poke) so I was excited for the dinner part of the reception, because I knew the bride's relatives (who happen to own a local catering business) were in charge of dinner.

As it turned out, they had the Kalua Pig I'd been craving (and it was excellent), sushi rolls, crab salad, pickled cucumber salad, and glass noodles, as well as some dishes that I hadn't had before: a coconut milk-heavy creamed spinach-like dish, an octopus dish, and a dessert that was kind of like almond tofu but was coconut flavored and was much more gooey. They also had a lot of poi, and well, I still don't like poi.

For dessert, there were four kinds of cake, all of which I managed to try:


I'd never been to a wedding reception quite like this one before. The last time I went to a wedding in Hawaii, the bride had grown up in Honolulu, but she was of Chinese and not Hawaiian ethnicity, so the overall tone of the wedding was much more traditionally American. This reception was very laid-back, and although the ceremony had been small, there were nearly 300 guests at the reception, mostly family. A live Hawaiian band played through most of the night, and various members of the bride's family would get up to do traditional Hawaiian dancing from time to time (and they were all quite good). At one point the groom (who is not Hawaiian) did a dance with the bride's father which he had been learning, and then the bride followed that up with a dance of her own. Overall, it was a very unique and fun wedding to have attended.

Our flight on Sunday wasn't until the late evening, but we had to drop some friends off at the airport before noon. On our way there, by request, we stopped again at Waiola for more shave ice. This time we tried the "Li Hing Mui" (Chinese preserved plum) with custard (basically flan). The combination sounded odd at first but it turned out really well, and in fact I liked it better than the Azuki Bowl we had had the day before.

After doing airport duty, we went to visit another friend from Honolulu. She tried to take us to Tamashiro Market for lunch, but it turned out they didn't serve lunch on weekends. Next we tried Nico's, but they were closed for a private event, so we ended up at Uncle's, which she said was less popular but I had a really decent calamari salad anyway, with large chunks of freshly fried calamari.

I'd already been to Pearl Harbor as a child and didn't remember being particularly impressed, but given that we had several hours to kill, we decided to head over to see the USS Arizona, just before closing. Even after getting there and looking around, I couldn't find any memory of having been there before, so I guess it's good that I went.

I thought this inscription was nice; it's a list of soldiers who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, but chose to be buried with their shipmates later:


(I think the bits sticking out of the water are of the decaying ship.)


Finally, just before heading back to the airport, we stopped by the curry house again for dinner, because I was determined to try an udon dish:


As much as I love Japanese curry, I hadn't ever tried it on udon before. It was very yummy (of course), and I will have to try making it myself one of these days.

eating well in Hawaii (days 1 & 2)

I did mention that I'd been eating particularly well recently, right?

About a month ago, I went to Hawaii for a week. (For another wedding. Yes, poor me.) After last year's experience, I knew that the food in Honolulu varied wildly, from the overpriced tourist traps around Waikiki to the delicious hole-in-the-wall bento box type places further from the beach, so I did some research in the days leading up to the trip, which paid off handsomely...

We got off the airplane around 7pm on Wednesday, met up with some friends, and promptly headed for a Japanese BBQ place called Gyu-Kaku. It's actually a chain but has only spread to New York and Los Angeles so far, unfortunately. The four of us ordered two set meals, with interesting side dishes like cream cheese salad (good, but a bit heavy in large amounts) and a rice bowl resembling bibimbop, as well the omnipresent ahi poke. We then added a bunch of meat, doubling up on the happy hour special of "harami", or skirt steak in miso sauce. Both the service and the meat quality were quite good, and I would have ordered another rice bowl if I hadn't been way too full already. Then, for dessert, there was a grilled pancake with red bean paste, which is right up my alley.

The next morning, we stopped at a Foodland for some poke:


Then, we headed over to Mitsu-Ken to find the garlic chicken that we had enjoyed so much on our last trip. Even though it was mid-morning, we had to stand in line for a good 10-15 minutes to get our chicken. We took the poke and the chicken and had a picnic of sorts in a random park. I think I really started to feel like I was on vacation when we spent all morning just driving around town assembling lunch.

My friend, an avid quilter, had mentioned before arriving that she was determined to go to Fabric Mart while in Honolulu, and we just happened to drive by it after lunch, so we had to stop by:


I haven't bought much fabric myself since high school, but apparently the prices were about half of what they are on "the mainland" and it certainly looked like the selection was good.

After some sightseeing (Iolani Palace, then Diamond Head again), we decided we wanted sushi for dinner. Luckily I had read online about a place called Mitch's Fish Market, so we called for a reservation, and headed over shortly afterwards.

We were a little surprised upon arrival, as the "restaurant" appeared to be tucked into a row of dark warehouses, and was not too inviting itself. We proceeded anyway, and pushed open the door, only to find a tiny room with a fish counter and maybe three tables seating two or three people apiece. I told the person behind the counter (a bit hesitantly, since I wasn't sure where they were going to put us) that we had a reservation for four, and he cheerfully led us across a dark alley to another building, where we found four cozy tables of four. This room looked much more pleasant, so we relaxed and began to order.

The food was AMAZING. We started with a "ume kurage" appetizer; jellyfish with plum paste. I love sour plum paste, and this dish was very, very strongly flavored with it:


Next up, spiny (Pacific) lobster and toro sashimi:



The toro was strangely cold, and at first I didn't like it too much, but it was very good after getting to room temperature. The lobster was excellent; I am very fond of lobster sashimi in general but I think it may have been the best I've ever had.

Then came some of our favorite nigiri sushi, rolls, and chirashi/sashimi specials for the (still hungry) guys:




I distinctly remember someone saying the negitoro rolls were "sinful" because they were so fatty and delicious. The ume shiso rolls were excellent as well; I wouldn't have thought that I would have liked a vegetarian roll so much.

Finally, the cooked-fish-eaters wrapped up the meal with some hamachi kama:


I myself admired the size of the portion but left it for others to enjoy the taste.

The entire meal came out to about $75 a head, including tax and tip, which is actually very reasonable for sushi, especially given that we stuffed ourselves silly and ordered things like lobster and toro.

More Hawaiian food doings to come...