17 August 2011: Waikoloa, Hawaii

After yesterday’s day of activity, and since today is out last full day in Hawaii, we opted to stay at the Hilton Waikoloa Village and just relax. We woke up late and headed directly to the lagoon where we snagged some lounge chairs in a good location (but not under an umbrella as all of those spots were already taken). After relaxing and reading for a little while, we went up to the lagoon-side bar and got some lunch. I got a burger and Cin a chicken sandwich, both of which were surprisingly good. This bar also offers a great view of the dolphin area, where they have dolphin encounter programming going on pretty much every day. It’s awesome to see the dolphins and how great they are with kids and such, but they have a lot of dolphins in a fairly small space. I really hope they like it there.

After lunch, we spent the entire afternoon reading and occasionally swimming in the lagoon. The lagoon is really interesting as it is connected to the ocean and full of sea life that you go and swim with. I swam with some big fish and then some big sea turtles. I same over one that was on the bottom eating away and then swam alongside another one for about 10yd until he swam underneath the waterfall; I did not follow him anymore as I couldn’t see well due to the waterfall and did not want to run into him or any other turtles.

Swam right over this guy!

This is just before I lost him under the waterfall.

I also swam alongside some really thin fish that were the same type that I swam a lot with during my honeymoon in Bora Bora. Cin and I have taken to calling these fish my Friends and I like that name.

My Friends. Good to see you again, buddies!

We eventually got to move under an umbrella once a family left theirs and spent the rest of the afternoon just reading and relaxing.

In the early evening, we headed back to our room and cleaned up for dinner. As we were walking over to dinner, we heard a conch shell noise and then watched as a Hawaiian guy, dressed up in full tribal attire, ran around the entire resort (this place is huge) lighting all of the torches on property with his torch (they are supplied with natural gas and by running past with the torch, he lit them). This was awesome to see and coincided with the sunset…what an awesome thing to do every night.

The torch lighter is on the right, running along the path.

We arrived at our dinner reservations, at the Kamuela Provision Company, the high-end restaurant at the Hilton (their website is here and their TripAdvisor page is here) and were shown to our table that was outside and had an awesome view of the just-set sun. The sky was amazing and gradually got darker over our meal. We each had salads (Cin a tomato one and me a mixed local organic greens one) and then I ate grilled mahi mahi with wilted spinach while Cin had pasta with vegetables and mahi mahi as well. We both really enjoyed our dinners.

After dinner, we went to the main resort bar and got drinks and cupcakes, the perfect dessert for our day. We ate, drank, and enjoyed the live music. The perfect end to a great, and very relaxing, day.