On May 16th we left on our first big “family vacation” to Hawaii’s Big Island. Our destination was the Hilton Waikoloa Village mega-resort. Now, Jen and I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen the Hilton in our pre-kid days, but vacationing with an almost-2-year old requires a very different approach to vacation planning. So, the supposedly family-friendly, Disneyland-esque Hilton it was — the idea being that with 2-3 hour naps happening smack-dab in the middle of each and every day, realistically we’d be spending the majority of our time at the resort. So, we best pick one with several restaurants and lots of stuff to do.

The Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii

The Hilton mostly lived up to our expectations, though a fair amount of (needed) improvements and maintenance was going on around the resort, which sort of killed some of the atmosphere. The restaurants proved insanely expensive (as expected) but were, for the most part, family-friendly. The sprawling, half-acre Kona Pool at our end of the resort was well-maintained and lots of fun. The kids portion even had a sand beach and bottom, which Evan eventually warmed up to. (2-year olds can be funny that way!) The Hilton also features its very own saltwater snorkeling lagoon. However, the water is pretty murky, the bottom is mostly covered in silt and sediment, and there’s just not that many fish. However, I was a little surprised to find a honest-to-goodness moray eel in the lagoon! It was also fun to follow the sea turtles as they came into the lagoon from the open ocean.

Unfortunately, each of us was sick in one way or another for much of our trip. Jen had a really bad flu/cold thing going into it; I tweaked my back on the second day and eventually caught whatever Jen had; Evan had a fever and vomited one day and seemed to be fighting a cold much of the time. Furthermore, adjusting Evan to the time difference and sharing a single (albeit pretty large) hotel room were both challenging. Oh, and did I mention that it was HOT? I’ll confess to occasionally thinking that vacation was a lot more work than just staying home!

Still, we managed have a good time. We spent quite a bit of time around the pool. I was also able to do two scuba dives and go snorkeling (beyond the resort) a couple times. (Unfortunately, Jen’s cold prevented both of these activities for her.) One morning we took a drive around the northwest tip of the island. It was really nice to rise out of the very hot, very dry, and (consequently) very barren west side of the island. On that day, we ate lunch in Waimea (Kamuela); it was so nice to get a break from “resort food”! In general, just getting away from work and the normal day-to-day routine was good for all of us. But there’s definitely more for us to see and do on the Big Island, and we look forward to returning in the future.

I’ve prepared two photo albums — one public and one private. The private album is basically accessible to anyone that we know. Just register (if you haven’t already) and we’ll approve your username/password as soon as we can.

This entry was posted by Steve on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Family, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.