HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND - Overnight Accommodations September 25, 2008
Posted by Kelly in : Big Island Hawaii, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Hawaii Travel, Resources, Updates , 1 comment so farHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
Overnight Accommodations
When it comes to picking a place to stay, whether you’re on vacation or searching for a home, there are almost too many choices here!
RESORTS. Many visitors want a resort experience, with a (full or modified) “American plan” under which all or nearly all activities and meals are included in the room rate. The Big Island’s resorts are on the coast of South Kohala: green oases in the district’s otherwise black lava landscape. Golf courses are abundant, but (compared to resorts on Maui and Kauai) the beaches are small and are typically augmented with swimming pools and ponds. Typical of the South Kohala resorts is the Waikoloa Beach Marriott.
Most resort hotels are mid- or low-rise buildings, with function rooms for conventions. But there’s one prominent exception: guests at Kona Village stay in thatched huts, called hales, that are fully modern inside, but (deliberately) have no phones or TVs.
HOTELS. Hilo doesn’t have resorts, but it does have a string of hotels on Banyan Drive, with extensive views of the bay and the ocean. The tallest are the Naniloa and the Hilo Hawaiian; a smaller alternative is Uncle Billy’s Hilo Bay Hotel.
Close to Downtown Hilo, the Dolphin Bay Hotel and the Wild Ginger Inn are modest in size and price.
There are dozens of small hotels in and around Kailua-Kona; but for a truly “local” experience, there’s no place like the Manago Hotel, in Captain Cook: a family enterprise for over 80 years.
B&Bs. A Bed-and-Breakfast is, essentially, someone’s house with nice guest-rooms. If you don’t want the all-inclusive resort experience, and don’t need the guest services of a hotel, then a B&B is ideal, especially if you want to stay in a town with no other kind of visitor accommodations, such as Pahoa, Volcano, Naalehu, Honokaa, or Hawi. Start your search for a B&B at the Bed & Breakfast Online website.
Probably the most celebrated (and, arguably, the most beautiful) B&B on the Big Island is Shipman House, in Hilo, originally the Victorian mansion of a prominent local family, where Queen Liliuokalani and author Jack London were house-guests.
Vacation Rentals. If you’re going to be here for more than a week or two, consider renting an apartment. You’ll be on your own for all meals, with kitchen facilities ranging from plain to fancy, and for housekeeping, with services ranging from full to none.
These accommodations are easy to find and compare, especially on the Konaweb site, or at the VacationRentals411 website, both of which cover the entire island.
And if I may make a suggestion . . . do consider my own vacation rental apartment in Hilo, which I call the Lehua Honeymoon Suite.
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HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND - The First Fruits of Summer June 18, 2008
Posted by Kelly in : About Hawaii, Big Island Hawaii, General, HERE ON THE BIG ISLAND, Hawaii Travel , add a commentHERE ON THE BIG ISLAND
By Kelly Moran
The First Fruits of Summer
Subtropical Hawaii does have seasons; and in the late Spring and early Summer, two of our best fruits come ripe: lychee, from China, and mango from the Indian subcontinent.
Anyone who patronized Chinese restaurants in bygone days may remember eating sweet, dried “litchi nuts,” which are to fresh lychee as raisins are to grapes, or prunes to plums. Lychee are almost never found in the wild: they’re raised in orchards of distinctive small trees with wavy, light-green leaves, that require nurturing to produce quality fruits in quantity.
Ripe lychee are about the size of golf balls, with red, rough-textured skin that you peel off by hand. The translucent white fruit tastes like an especially juicy grape. At about twenty to the pound, you can expect to pay three dollars for a pound of lychee. The original Chinese varieties had large seeds; but twentieth-century agronomists developed varieties with small, “shriveled” seeds, that enable each fruit to have more meat; so you may see those labeled “small seed,” in farmers’ market stalls, and they may be priced a bit higher. Like cherries, canned lychee retain almost all of the fresh fruit’s flavor; so if you can’t get to Hawaii during lychee season, buy a can from the “Asian” section of Mainland supermarkets.
Around this time of year, too, local farmers offer a related fruit called longon. Smaller than lychee, and with a stiff, brown skin, the fruit is much sweeter, though in a cloying sort of way; some people construe it as being rather more aromatic than flavorful. Later in the year, another relative, called rambutan, will come ripe: it has a “hairy” skin, and a taste similar to lychee though not as juicy. Rambutan also has a longer season and a longer shelf-life, so it has become extremely popular in local orchards.
The smallest mangoes are the so-called “common” variety, and they are easily spotted from the roadside. The tree is long-lived and enormous: 80 feet or higher, with 30-foot spreads, dark leaves tinged with red, and an abundance of small fruit that depend from long stems. Saplings can sprout from fallen fruit, but in general, wherever you see a mature tree now, there is or was a settlement there.
Mangoes are related - believe it or not - to poison ivy and poison oak. If you have never eaten one before, you’ll quickly discover if you are hyper-sensitive or allergic to them: you may develop a swarm of (harmless) red welts around your lips that local folks call “mango mouth.” With most people, however, this does not happen.
Common mangoes can and do ripen into sweet, juicy delights, but a few varieties have a taste reminiscent of turpentine. The trees being so big, common mangoes are also hard to pick - you need a long pole with a net or basket on the end - and may well have been stung by fruit-flies before you can even get to them. So, many are picked before they’re ripe and turned into chutney, or prepared as savory treats: local recipes for “green” mango famously include marinating the slices in soy sauce (shoyu).
It’s the cultivated mangoes that are the most consistently sweet, and while there are, technically, hundreds of varieties, they fall into just a few general categories that you’ll find in local farmers’ markets right now.
Closest to “common” in size and taste, with the same greenish skin color, are the slightly elongated “cigar” mangoes. Several varieties are larger and longer still, but have a distinctive yellow-orange skin, much like the color of the fruit itself. (In other countries, such as The Philippines, these are the mangoes that are commercially dried and packaged; and except for the absence of juice, dried mangoes taste almost exactly like fresh mangoes.) The largest mangoes are the Hayden variety, which can grow big enough for two people to share. Expect to pay about fifty cents for a common or cigar mango; a dollar apiece for the larger yellow type, and three or four dollars for a giant Hayden.
All mangoes have large, flat seeds; here’s how to get the most meat out of them: Slice the fruit the “long” way, close to either side of the seed, to yield two cupped-hand-shaped halves. Set those halves aside and peel the strip of rind from around the seed; slice off whatever meat you can, into a bowl, and then (as local folks do) suck the rest of the meat from the edges of the seed before discarding it. Now, for each of the two halves, make tic-tac-toe on the flat side with a knife, but don’t pierce through to the skin. Turn the half-mango inside-out, and you produce neat chunks of juicy mango that you can peel or slice off, into your bowl.
