Dreamscapes Travel & Lifestyle Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dreamscapes.ca/i/889690
FALL/ WINTER 2017 DREAMSCAPES 35 coffee plantation at Kona, the airport town synonymous with the Island of Hawaii. Kona coffee is, of course, world-renowned, and there's no better combination to follow the unplugged theme than to stay at the Holualoa Inn. The Holualoa Inn is like the best ryokan you never visited in Japan. When you arrive, the elegance of the entrance is overpowering. A long open-air veranda welcomes you, although, oddly enough, if you arrive after six in the evening, no staff will greet you. Sound unfriendly? No, it's all part of the Hawaiian cool. After breakfast, you start your self- guided tour of the grounds, covering more than 12 hectares. Eventually it dawns on you that you are following an ancient royal road from Hawaii's past. You can even detect a royal toboggan run. You may be there in the Christmas season, but aside from musicians strumming Mele Kalikimaka, you won't notice too many other reminders of Santa and the North Pole. Other well-known spots on the Island of Hawaii include its volcanoes, active and otherwise. At Volcanoes National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, visitors are regularly in awe of the world's most active volcano, Kilauea, which continually flows into the Pacific Ocean. Spend your winter vacation viewing active volcanoes? Think of it as a natural New Year's display. Hawaii's first astronaut, Ellison S. Onizuka hailed from this island, and his name is immortalized at the Onizuka Space Center on the dormant 4,200-metre-high volcano Mauna Kea. At the Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii in Hilo, the planetarium show is a must. Markets in Hilo include a wide variety of local products, such as fresh fruits, raw sugar cane juice and even musubi—think salted rice wrapped in dried seaweed with a piece of Spam stuck on top. And in Hilo, you can try the very Hawaiian dish of loco moco, a mix of sticky rice, eggs, hamburger steak and brown gravy. The drive-in that patented it, Café 100 (established in 1946), is always full. Your last view of Hilo may be young people practising ukuleles in the park. MAUI MAGIC From the northern coast of the Island of Hawaii, you can make out the coast of Maui. Maui is arguably the best-known Hawaiian island and for centuries was the plantation island, harvesting huge numbers of pineapples and sugar cane. OPPOSITE: Hanalei Lookout on the island of Kauai. TOP: Small bay on the road to Hana on the island of Maui. ABOVE: Sunset on the beach along Front Street in Lahaina on the island of Maui. LEFT: Walking along Halemaumau Crater in Volcanoes National Park on the Island of Hawaii. Hawaii Tourism Authority/Tor Johnson