I had divided our awesome Hawaiian vacation into thirds with the final third being relaxing in one of the resorts on the island. Most of our friends who vacation in Hawaii rent houses, but we were determined to spend the whole time being spoiled and not have to do anything like cooking or cleaning. ;)
We drove the saddle road (between Mauna Lao and Mauna Kea) back from Hilo. We got rained on the first part of the drive and it magically disappeared once we were on the dry side of the island. Go figure! We decided to stop in Kona for lunch and ended up sitting at a table next to the cutest little lizards.
This little guy got super brave and was staring at Matt, so Matt tried to feed him. Apparently he is not impressed with human food. He's looking at Matt like "Really dude?" Matt did try to catch him a fly, but we are not adept insect hunters. The lizard finally did get an ant we found for him, but he must not have liked it because he wasn't interested in ant #2.
We finally got to the super fancy resort and it was even huger than what I had imagined. We were met with a tram that ferries you around to the different towers of the hotel! And there was also a series of boats you could use as well. Holy cow!
All of our guides we read pre-trip said the Luaus were totally geared for the tourists, but worth doing at least once. So we signed up to go to one our first night at the resort. I got a good photo of the guys providing the music, but didn't get any good ones of the dancers. The lighting was pretty low and those dancers move so unbelievably fast. I highly recommend going at least once - if nothing else to be amazed at the speed of their hips! :)
Luau selfie for the boys. Check out Matt's awesome Hawaiian shirt with ukuleles on it! What a perfect find for Matt. My dress wasn't nearly as exciting, but it was perfect Luau wear. Plus I finally got my flower lei. I kept expecting someone to give me one. None at the airport, none at any of the hotels, I was starting to despair of ever getting one. Luckily, Matt managed to get me one before the Luau started. Yay!
The resort really was gorgeous! It was so unbelievable huge, but it was all so pretty. Plus there were multiple restaurants and about 18,000 pieces of art scattered on the grounds. We spent a lot of time just wandering around.
They even had a dolphin cove where you could swim with dolphins (for a fee, of course!). I didn't get the background on whether these were injured dolphins being rehabilitated or captives. I'm going to pretend they were as happy as they looked. The people playing with them certainly were!
But the views. The ocean looked amazing, the sky was amazing. It really was a nice relaxing end to our whirlwind trip around the big island.
Our room was on the one side of the resort and here is a photo looking toward the other end of the resort. The beach is pretty much all rocks, so that was a small downside, but luckily the pools were all super inviting to make up for it. And luckily our room was on the ground floor, so I could retreat to the safety of our shaded patio when I had enough sun. :)
And one last cool sight before the end of our last day - humpback whales! These guys are supposed to be in Alaska this time of year, but this momma and baby were a bit behind. Someone said the baby was born late, so they hadn't migrated yet - I have no idea if that is true, but it sounded good! Anyhow, it was super windy, so the horizon was almost all dust, but you could see the two whales playing in the water and the faint outline of Maui in the background.
Finally, vacation is over... Our plane is patiently waiting on the tarmac for us (and about a hundred others) to get onboard. We were a little bummed it was over, but we also really missed our two little guys, so we were pretty willing to head home. A lot of fun in the sun was had and given the popularity of the islands, I am sure we will be back. :)