It’s now been pretty much a week since we arrived in Hawaii; how the hell did that happen? Seriously? I know time always goes extra quickly when you’re enjoying yourself, but it doesn’t seem possible for it to have disappeared that quickly. On the other hand, I guess I can look back and count up an awful lot of awesome, so it’s not like the time has been wasted.

I am nonetheless sad to be leaving. It’s a tragedy. It really, really is.

Tonight, we pack everything up and get ready to head in to stage two of the holiday: Seattle. I am both enormously excited and quietly apprehensive about this – we’re going to be staying with, and spending time with, people I have known for a long time, but never met before. The potential for awful is there, but the potential for awesome is definitely greater. It should be good.

And Kona? What have we done since I wrote last? Well!

We shopped on our first night, which meant we had enough supplies on hand to cook breakfast at home again. Thus, we were ready to go out and explore Kona pretty early – certainly long before we needed to be there for our pre-planned submarine tour. The Atlantis Submarine company does underwater tours in a specially designed submarine; there’s a lot to see beneath the water in Kona, and we saw an impressive amount of it from 100ft below the water. Taking photos was pretty difficult, and even the ones we did get were pretty bleached of colour given the depth– but the video is representative.

It was pretty epic.

But since we were so early, we had to stop and fill in some time, which we did via coffee and ice cream, never mind that it was about 10am. Kona coffee is a definite improvement over previous attempts at coffee; they actually do a decent espresso, at least in some places. The ice cream was also impressively tasty.

After the submarine, we headed up to the Kona Brewing Company so that Rohan could try what beers he had not yet had of theirs– plus lunch. It was pleasant in the shade, and the food was good, even if they did not serve cocktails. (Sadface: who doesn’t serve cocktails?) The walk back to our condo was less nice– it’s a bit over a mile each way, and when the sun is high and the humidity is likewise… well. After that, even Rohan wanted to get into the pool.

That was yesterday. The pool was followed by dinner (and cocktails), and eventually bed. Today? Well – we ate out, this morning, and had eggs and coffee (and an apple and cinnamon bagel for me; yay!) at a little place right on the water. Our plan had been to hit the pool again afterwards, but it was full of kids, and we demurred. Instead, there was a coffee plantation to visit. Kona coffee has a great reputation, and after seeing the process they go through to pick the beans (which are, of course, not beans at all), I can see why. Plus, it tastes really good. It was amazingly cool up in the hills: 69 degrees, according to the thermometer in my car, compared to 84 down by the coast. We had intended to try and find a beach afterwards, but you really need to know where you’re going to find beaches around here; there just aren’t that many of them. Fail.

We swam in the pool, instead.

And now, here we are. Fed, with a load of laundry on in preparation for packing, and the last of our groceries being worked through despite the extreme feeding.

Hawaii has been awesome. We’ve already talked about whether we’d like to come back, and where to – and the answer is definitely yes. Kona has been a nice middle point between touristy and not really touristy; there’s loads of great food, and plenty of stuff to do (including a lot we didn’t have time for), but it’s still relaxed and now glitzy and plasticy the way Waikiki was. The weather has been perfect.

And the cocktails have been cheap.

What more can I ask?