Impressionist Hawaii - Day One

You may call this trip miserable, but I'd rather give it a more favorable title - impressionism. After I lost my -8.5 distance glasses three hours after arriving in Big Island, I was doomed to get extremely fuzzy impression of everything I saw there; or to put it politely, whatever I saw, I felt like admiring some masterpieces drawn by French impressionists - I knew what I was looking at, but I wasn't certain about how they looked like. When Gang exclaimed at the sea, waves, lava, etc, I marveled at their colors. Anyway, things were not bad as I had expected; and now when I look back, they are actually pretty interesting.

When the plane approached the Big Island, the first land we saw on the Pacific after 5-hour flight, I could see volcano and black lava running miles from craters to the sea. Then I knew the volcano park would be one of our destinations: it's just too unique to be skipped. I regretted wearing my jeans soon after landing. Hawaii is unbelievably hot! But I also must admit that I was actually very happy to find out that I could wear the shorts and dresses that are too cold for the bay area. After a quick lunch at the airport, which by the way has only ONE restaurant, we took the shuttle to car rental places, and had one of our best experiences of renting cars. I used a self-service machine to check-in, and drove a white Dodge right away. The hotel is located by the beach, and we could see a palm standing by the sea and cruises far away from our balcony.

Our first stop after check-in was to Kahaluu Beach Park, which is said to be the best place for snorkeling on the Big Island. Now I believe people who said that must be making a joke. It's not even average. The beach is small, rough and weirdly crowded. Gang and I had our first snorkeling experience there, which is not comparable to the Hanauma Bay in Honolulu. Anyway we spent about two hours on the beach, getting ourselves used to snorkeling devices and busying applying sun creams. On our way back, we decided that we deserved better beaches than this, and therefore we headed for the White Sand Beach with beautiful and soft white sand and waves, where I was accidently caught in the big wave and lost my glasses. In the end, Gang and I sat on the beach in swimming suits, burying ourselves in the sand when Gang tried to explain to me why my glasses could not wash ashore and how dangerous it would be to salvage them. I didn't understand what he was talking about, but he seemed enjoying explaining his major to layman. In spite of what happened, I'd still recommend this beach, but remember to fasten your glasses before staying too close to the sea.

Hawaii became blurry for me ever since. Gang held my hands and led me to the car, and showed me around the Kailua-Kona downtown at night. We had seafood at an American restaurant which had singers and dancers performing local music during dinner. Of course I didn't see anything, but I was impressed by the joyful mood around me. I guess most people came here for vacations, therefore they were more likely to laugh and relax.