This is a re-post of a story from Hawaii in 2018. A newly discovered great drive. Classic food places. And lovely nature all around. Hawaii Big Island is always a huge treat for me. It’s the Hawaiian island I know the least, partly because I haven’t been there as often as the others and partly because it’s so darn huge; as big as all the other islands put together. We only had a couple days, and I wanted to stay in Hilo as we had visited there in 1968; the first year our family took a trip to Hawaii. My Read more
Hilo
I had long been in love with Hawaii by the time it happened. But a routine chat at the public golf course at Waiehu, Maui in the mid 1970’s did a lot to boost my affection for these islands and its people. I was in high school at the time and was vacationing on Maui for perhaps the third time. My parents had let me invite a friend from my home town in California, and we had planned to play golf one of the fancy-schmancy Wailea courses, which I believe were pretty new at the time. We pulled into the Read more
The damage has been almost entirely to private homes, far from areas frequented by visitors. But the volcano that has pummelled the southeast corner of Hawaii Big Island has certainly had an impact on the state’s vital tourism industry, officials say. I chatted by phone on Friday with Ross Birch, head of Hawaii Big Island Tourism. He told me there’s no doubt that the uncertainty has hurt his island’s economy. He also agreed that a lot of the concern isn’t necessary. “Less than 10 square miles has been affected by the volcano,” he said. “The island is 4,028 square miles.” Read more
Hawaii is open for business. I met with Hawaii Tourism officials on Monday at the IPW U.S. tourism event in Denver and that was their overwhelming message. Yes, there is some volcano activity on the east side of the Big Island of Hawaii. But it’s limited to 10 square miles of an island that’s more than 4,000 square miles in all. Erin Kinoshita of The Anthology Group, which does public relations for Hawaii tourism, said there’s been no significant impact on the city of Hilo, which is only a half hour’s drive from the eruption site. It’s almost 100 miles Read more
I forgot just how big the Big Island of Hawaii really is. It’s been a few years since my last visit, and I hadn’t remembered that the Big Island, the most southerly in the Hawaiian chain, was as big as the other main islands put together. Impressive, and so much diversity, too; cities and fun towns and cool villages and fiery volcanoes and so much more. Here’s a photo display of some of my favourite moments….
