April 9 Big Island Kona

We traveled over to the other side of the big island to Kona today.  This was the only port where we couldn't just walk off the ship.  We had to take a tender from the ship to a parking lot in Kona. We didn't rent a car because I had read that the airport and rental cars are so far from town that it takes up too much of the day.
The first thing that we did was take a taxi out to Kaiako-Honokohua Nat'l Historic Park.  There was a new visitors center where the taxi dropped us off and then we wandered down a path to the beach.  Our fun was finding turtles in the water.

After we stopped to cool off in an old A-frame that apparently was used to house many from the elements. We finally got a picture of the four of us.  We are with Kent and Camille Larsen from Manti.

We wanted the taxi to pick us up at the boat harbor closer to where we were and we had a hard time communicating with the taxi where we were.  Once he found us he took us up to the Kona LDS Temple.  He was ready to drop us off and get rid of us for some reason.  The temple is up on a hill in a residential area and it was closed.  We were able to get pictures, though.

We walked down the hill a few blocks to the commercial part of town that is full of lots of tourist shops.  I had read that one should eat at the Kona Inn. We sat on the open terrace  and had a view of the bay with ocean breezes.

Kona Inn was built in 1928 by the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company for a location for people to stay when they got off ships.  It is in the heart of old Kona and the tourist shopping area.  The food was good but the location was fantastic.

After lunch we wandered the town a little and then caught a tender back to the ship.