It was windy and hot so it was not a great beach day on the coast last Sunday so Lissette and I decided to take a drive upcountry to the old Saddle Road and see what we could see! Wind on the coast usually signals clear, blue skies in the days to come and strangely the winds relent as you climb in elevation out of the resort areas. Once you reach the Mamalahoa Highway or “upper road” you can expect a change in weather, cooler, as well and typically with cloud cover. The clouds can bring rain or in our case this day, beautiful, perfect weather!! Saddle Road also known as Hawaii Route 200, traverses Hawaii Island for 52.7 miles from downtown Hilo to its junction with Highway 190 near Waimea. The “old” Saddle Road now breaks off the “new” Saddle Road or Daniel K. Inouye Highway just past the Pohakuloa Training Area and eventually intersects Highway 190 near Waimea town. It is also the direct route for access to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa’s observatories at nearly 14,000’ of elevation. The windy and sometimes single...

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Elite pros and qualifying age group athletes converge on our island yearly to celebrate the premier endurance athlete’s dream race-the Ironman World Championship.  This isn’t any Ironman Race…this is the world championship of this grueling distance event at one of the birthplaces of the triathlon sport. Just making it to Kona from home towns around the world once you qualify can be a challenge financially and otherwise further making participation in this elite event hard to accomplish.  This year World record holder and Olympian Tim Don from England was on a training ride Thursday before the race, near the Kmart in Kona and was hit by a car at a marked intersection.  He suffered a fractured neck vertebrae but is hopeful to continue his career in 6 weeks. The athletes started this year’s competition with somewhat calm seas as they swam away from the Kona pier toward the first buoy marked by the iconic Royal Kona Resort.  Then out to sea and back returning to the Kona pier area.  There they transitioned to their bi...

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September 16, 2017 was International Coastal Cleanup day started by the Ocean Conservancy nearly 30 years ago. Even though this is an annual event for some “coastal cleanup” is an everyday event for Lissette and I as we walk and run one of the most beautiful and pristine coastlines in the world within the Mauna Lani Resort. The photos above are just one day’s “treasure” of “opala” or trash in what is as much of our daily routine as our early morning walk and run. I also included a photo of a plastic hard hat I found at the shoreline which floated here from Japan. Plastic, opala (trash) is usually the most evident in and around our shoreline but I’ve found glass bottles, oil filters, fishing nets and other debris while scuba diving, surfing or paddling. I remember finding a plastic beach ball floating 1/2 mile off shore riding my stand up paddle board and a large, ice cooler another time. Yes-I chased down both and hauled them to shore with me:) We do all of this with joy, never condemning silently the source of...

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Our local news stations have been “buzzing” this summer’s regarding the King Tides that have been very noticeable on our shorelines. Lissette and I happened to be at Makaiwa Bay to witness first hand the effects of these rare high tide events. A King Tide is a nick name often used to describe exceptionally high “Spring” tides. “Spring” refers to the 'springing forth' of the tide during a new and full moon. The moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth in its monthly orbit, and the Earth follows an elliptical path in its yearly orbit around the sun. This means that, at times, the moon and the sun are closer to Earth. When the moon circles closest to the Earth, it is in a position called perigee. When the Earth circles closest to the sun, it is in a position called perihelion. The gravitational pull from both the moon and sun are even greater at these close distances, making King Tides more pronounced (higher and lower) than regular Spring Tides. Imagine the 3 spheres aligned with a full moon and tightly ...

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One of our favorite activities near the monthly full moon is to attend “Talk Story” or as it’s formally known-“Twilight at Kalahuipua’a”. The site of this no charge, almost monthly event is the Eva Parker Woods Cottage located ocean front on an island of grass between Makaiwa Bay and the historic Kalahuipua’a fishponds. The fishponds were once part of the Makaiwa Bay until ancient Hawaiians built walls into the water to create multiple large ponds for aqua culture. The ponds are now a part of the Mauna Lani resort where the owners continue their maintenance and preservation all to benefit the schools of mullet, milk fish and moi that inhabit and thrive with few predators. Kalahuipua’a is translated to mean “the gathering of the pigs”. Since Hawaiians often expressed themselves allegorically it is speculated they were referring to the large fish in the fishponds as being the “pigs”. The scene is amazingly beautiful as the crowd gathers at sunset for what is usually a concert by a well known island mu...

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I had a great opportunity to visit Kona Cold Lobsters with a friend who is a seasoned chef. Chef Paul and I took a quick tour of KCL, which is one of his local suppliers, located at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) near the Kona Keahole Airport. NELHA’s unique location and its deep seawater resource have attracted numerous aquaculture companies, including Big Island Abalone, Royal Hawaiian Seafarms, Kona Blue Water Farms and Troutlodge Marine Farms. Kona Cold’s marine lobsters are fished using traps in the North Atlantic ocean off the coasts of Canada and the USA and carefully inspected. As each lobster is removed from the trap, the length is gauged and the tail is inspected for eggs. Small and extra large lobsters as well as egg bearing females are returned to the sea. This eco-friendly capture methodology has assured sustainability for an 80 million pound annual fishery. The selected, U.S., live lobsters are air shipped packed in dry, gel refrigerant for a 36 hour, out of water, flight to Kona’s...

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A beautiful sight greeted Lissette and I this morning on our early morning walk.  Three sailing canoes were streaming together across the distant horizon-heading down wind and toward us at a very brisk rate, all with traditional “crab claw” sails unfurled.  There were two with traditional deep red sails and one with a dark blue sail.  As they approached over the next few minutes I could tell the 2 nearest to the shore were making a detour into Makaiwa Bay and our walk would intersect with them at the small beach momentarily.  The lone canoe with a blue sail seemed to be sailing down the coast line paying no attention to the others.  When we arrived together at the shore line,  we were greeted by a crew of 8 boys and girls and a couple of uncles and aunties that had been the skippers of these very sleek and fast vessels.  They beached the canoes at full speed with sails still hoisted and the kids smiling from ear to ear. After they gathered themselves I asked what group they were a part of as they all were wearing the s...

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I love to surf or he’e nalu in Hawaiian, especially early in the morning at day break and late in the afternoon at sunset or beyond until “dark thirty”. Lissette often heads to the shoreline with a flash light to find me and several other equally addicted surfers in pitch dark surfing under moonlight and with flickering tiki torch light emitted by the Mauna Lani Bay hotel or several of the ocean front estates near Makaiwa Bay. At times you can only make out the incoming swell by a slight difference in the grey and black tones in the water or the glint of the moons reflection off the top of the incoming swell. Those sitting deeper and near the reef see it first and begin to whistle their own warning of the incoming wall of water. Dangerous-yes-but there is nothing more thrilling than timing a take off only by the swell hitting the back of your board and the obvious roar of the wave hitting the reef. Sunsets along the Kohala Coast are incredible also magnified by the beautiful reflection of the red glow against Mauna Kea an...

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My wife Lissette is adventuresome and is great at meeting very smart, talented and interesting people that live on our island.  She attends the North Hawaii Hospice “High Tea Fundraiser” almost every year and was the winning bid this year for “High Tea for 4” at the Martha Brahms’s tea farm in the hamlet of Volcano, directly across from the entrance to the Volcanoes National Park. The Volcanoes National Park is located at 4000’ elevation on the caldera rim of the Kilauea volcano which has been continually erupting since 1986.  Who would have known there is tea being grown in the surrounding dense, forest amidst the tree fern, ginger and ohia trees?  What a beautiful and surreal setting to enjoy a great afternoon of incredible food prepared by our own private chef and surrounded by the tea we were drinking. The small area known as simply “Volcano” is mainly comprised of the National Park, a small concentration of older historic homes housing the Volcano Lodge and Restaurant, a few Bed and Breakfast establishm...

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Image used under license from Freestock.com Important news for those wanting to add a certain method to offset the ever increasing power charges from HELCO. Hawaii island residents “enjoy” the highest power charges in North America at almost 50 cents a kilowatt resulting in very high monthly power bills. The only method for avoiding these costs is to add a solar system to your home or condominium if allowed. Over the last year HELCO has closed the grid near and around the Kohala Coast including the Mauna Lani and other resorts to new systems. A recent newsletter from HELCO included this positive notification: The CGS program at all three utilities last year reached the capacity caps set by the PUC. To enable more customers to enroll, the companies proposed that space be transferred from approved but long-inactive rooftop projects. Estimates show at least 20 megawatts of CGS capacity is available for customers of the three companies, representing about 2,800 private rooftop solar systems. More than half of that capacit...

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