Before Trump took office we’d planned to do a snorkeling escape with our snorkeling friends every February. Why February? Well if we lived in Ohio we could say it’s to get away from the cold, but it doesn’t really get that cold in Los Angeles. However, it is Chinese New Year, and that’s when Sam’s work goes from 100 hour weeks to a regular 40 (maybe) and it’s a little easier to slip away for a few days. We started this over a decade ago with regular weekend trips to OC and La Jolla with friends for snorkeling, but in 2018 (?) we went with a group to Loreto. Except Sam couldn’t come because it wasn’t in February. We started up again in 2024 in February so she could make it. We skipped it in 2025 because the election spooked us from going to Mexico (or anywhere south of the border), which is where you go for a snorkel vacation with cheap flights, quick flights, cheap lodging, cheap seafood, etc. Friends thought we were being ridiculous (although they’d be too nice to say it), but – hey, whaddayaknow – the cartel started days of “violent chaos” and American tourists were warned to shelter in place in Puerto Vallarta on the last day of our Hawaii trip this year! If this seems silly I’ll relay to you the fact that we went to Costco at least four times in Kona, including the day the cartel set the Costco in Puerto Vallarta on fire. That would have been us if we’d had this February trip in Puerto Vallarto instead. And we had good reasons to go there – as you’ll read later we STILL haven’t been able to swim with whale sharks, and Puerto Vallarta in February is a known hangout for them.
Keep in mind all this chaos happened without American troops intervening. Imagine if Trump had not TACO’d again and sent troops down there to take out the cartels after all his earlier threats to do so. You’d have American tourists hanging from bridges and taken hostage, ripped right out of the aisles at Costco. Still think I’ve got Trump Derangement Syndrome? This is what happened when Mexico dealt with the cartels on their own, imagine the cartel reaction if this was an American military mission like the abduction of Maduro. Seems like I’m always right about terrible things… Anyway, because it didn’t take a genius to see this coming with Trump’s threats to the cartels and recent abduction of Maduro, we suggested to the group we go to Hawaii again instead – this time the Big Island, which Sam and I visited in 2014 and had fond memories of.
A lot has changed in Kona though. Uncle Billy’s was bought out by Hilton or one of those chains and is behind schedule on renovations so we couldn’t stay there again. Last time we stayed at Uncle Billy’s we watched dolphins playing in the bay from our balcony. The locals (and tourists) are very upset about a parking scheme downtown that mirrors Pasadena’s current problems: $15/hr and you can only pay by downloading an app. Businesses are upset because tourists are just staying in their big resorts (which we did too sometimes) instead of shopping in downtown Kona. Honestly the downtown area felt pretty dead most of the time compared to twelve years ago. Of course the locals will also tell you this is due in large part not from parking (which you don’t realize until you’re already there) but the knock-on effects of foreign tourist boycotts, which are a knock-on retaliatory effect of tariffs. The Canadians are gone. The mainlanders are gone. When we were there it was about 95% Chinese tourists, but that’s not enough to make up for the boomer snowbirds that used to flock to the heat here and spend their social security checks. I can’t say if this is true for the other islands, Maui was doing well recovering from the fires with lots of interests when we visited, but our visit to Maui was back when it looked like Colorado might even keep Trump off the 2024 ballot and he might be in jail by 2025 anyway, so nobody had any reason to boycott America yet. Foreign tourists are definitely not putting “America First” these days. Except for Chinese, because they own us now.
There’s another little wrinkle for Americans. At least from the city you’d think would send the most tourists to Hawaii; flights back from the islands to Los Angeles are almost all late night or red-eye. Because of the wind direction the flights back are only 4 or 5 hours, not really long enough to get any sleep, so who wants to take a red eye from Kona and be miserable the next day? We booked a flight that was supposed to get back at 10pm and then had it bumped to 12:30am! Still better than the red eye our friends took that finally left the island at 1am, but…why do this? I don’t want jetlag from a 4 hour flight, guys! Again, it’s probably a knock-on effect of a decrease in interest in these flights forcing the airlines to consolidate scheduling and shuffle planes and pilots around through the islands and get them back to LA to fly more profitable routes in the daytime (on both of our flights there were dedicated seats to pilots at the back that were just riding on the flight to get to the other airport to then fly a different route).
Also, yes, always the disclaimer of any references to visiting buildings or eating at restaurants was outside – our friends are no longer covid cautious {to our degree, they might still mask on planes} so we never shared indoor air, and if you know Kona, it’s very windy, making outdoor eating just a tad safer.
Friday 2/13/2026
Our flight out got moved up earlier than it should have been, and our friends’ flight got delayed, so we did a switcheroo. It didn’t much matter because we were on separate airlines and wouldn’t have met up until we got to the hotel anyway. We had planned to eat at the airport before boarding, but due to construction (or something) there wasn’t much food in the American Airlines terminal and we had to walk for 15 mins each way to get to it. $80 later we had the worst fries ever. Would not recommend. We were dismayed to get a notification while in Hawaii that our international flight to Portugal later this year will not be out of Tom Bradley International Terminal (which has good food options) but…out of this same lame terminal (4) =(
Sam and I gambled to save money on this flight by not buying our seats together; American put us together anyway for free, but with a middle and aisle instead of a window. The girl at the window never asked to get out for a bathroom break on the 6 hour flight. I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to hold it that long at any point in my entire life, but certainly not now.
We got off the plane still hungry so we had a late night snack at the first gas station after leaving the airport. It was too late to get poke, but they still had loco moco and misubi. Not great, mind you, but nothing you can get at a gas station on the mainland late at night.
Saturday 2/14/2026
We started our first full day (of this trip) in Kona by visiting the keauhou market, which only happens on Saturdays. The only real food vendor was the gluten-free empanada stand, which was where I was planning to eat anyway. We ordered both kinds of empanadas (all made with masa) and they were great, although there weren’t enough tables so we had to eat them on a bench in front of an old Cinemark theater in the same shopping mall. The proprietor said he was originally from Long Beach and wanted to bring his heritage to the islands. I wish he’d come back so I can eat these empanadas at home. (normally they’re made with wheat flour, which is a no-go for me now)
After that we….went to Costco to get food for the week. We also bought new snorkel fins as my 10+ year old ones were starting to crack apart and are generally tougher to pack in a suitcase than the newer flatter flexible fin models.
After Costco we chilled down some prosecco and drank that while eating chocolate dipped strawberries on a sort of bridge between the buildings of our resort. The bridge was on the second floor and faced the ocean, so we saw plenty of humpbacks blowing steam and once we saw a breach pretty close to shore.
We walked the little blacktop path that goes along the black volcanic rock ocean cliffs around the resort next to the ocean, then hung out at the pool for a while.
Around 6pm we split up so Sam and I could go north to eat at Umekes Fish Market for dinner. The fish market was very crowded and unfortunately stopped selling takeout just before we arrived, so we drove to a nearby KTA grocery that was known for their poke…but they were sold out. We ultimately settled for pork and fish at a local Chinese takeout restaurant and ate it on the sidewalk.
Sunday 2/15/2026
On Sunday we went to another farmer’s market in downtown Kona but this one had nothing to eat (except fruit), so we walked up to Açaí Hawai’i Company, which Sam and I ate at 12 years ago and had fond memories of watching the dolphins from the second floor. There was no room up top this time so we couldn’t watch the dolphins (although, on all our trips to the downtown area this time we never saw dolphins playing in that bay anyway).
Afterwards we walked through town and then waited, on a tip from a local coffee vendor, for something called “The Stroll” to start, thinking it would have lunch via food vendors. It did not. So we walked up the street to the same Poke place Sam and I went to 12 years ago. It’s still good, but it’s changed ownership and theme. Less about the different kinds of fish and more about a couple specialties and automated ordering. I believe when we were there before it was a to-go outpost of Umeke’s; now it’s independent of that and called Pa’akai Poke. One good change is the new place has easy to read info about food allergies for their poke’s.
Then we grabbed more acai (different shop) and drove through the inland rain uphill towards Mauna Kea. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to go to the top because we didn’t have four wheel drive rentals, but we thought we’d go up to the stopping point and see if there was a view from there. Because of the fog there wasn’t much of a view, so we walked around in the visitor’s center while contemplating our next course of action. The visitor’s center has information about the volcanoes and observatories, and a tv had footage of Kilauea erupting. I assumed it was canned footage. A ranger told us the view of magma coming out of Kilauea on the tv was actually from a live cam and it had just started erupting in the last hour. At the strong urging of the ranger we decided to high tail it to the other side of the island to see the eruption while it lasted. It only took an hour to drive east over to the other side and cut back southwest at Hilo get to the park, but traffic was so backed up by the entrance to Volcanoes National Park it took another 3 hours to actually get into park and find a spot at the overlook. The whole time we were calling each other back and forth wondering if we should turn around and go home. Most of the time our cars were sitting in the dark in park and not moving at all, listening to the rain hitting the roof. When cell phone service would resume we’d check the live cams online to see if the eruption was still going. They typically only last a few to several hours at a time and there was no point waiting and waiting and waiting if it’d already stopped (plus there was nowhere to use the bathroom until you get into the park and we hadn’t brought much food with us either, this was all unplanned). At one point Sam and I swapped seats and I walked through the rain up the line of cars looking for a restroom somewhere, but there weren’t any (public).
Eventually we limped into the park. It was already after 8pm so the ticket booths were closed and no passes were needed. Rangers were waving people in lines to park so we went as far as we could go (as close to the volcano). As we slowly drove along in starts and stops we’d get little glimpses of the eruption through the trees with the sky lit up in bright red and orange.
Once we finally got waved into a parking spot we leapt from the car and ran to the observation area, knowing the volcano could stop erupting at any moment.
We made it! The rain was pelting us from the back making this volcano view ironically freezing cold and wet, but I suppose that’s better than breathing in the toxic fumes if the wind had blown it our direction.
We stayed for around forty-five minutes in awe of the thing, knowing that the longer we lingered the longer it would take to get home. It was extremely difficult to photograph given the horizontally blowing wind and my bones turning to wobbly jelly (I only had a t-shirt and shorts on with a golf jacket thrown over), but also difficult to tear yourself away. I kept thinking about Mustafar, because that’s my closest frame of reference for what this felt like, having never watched an active volcano eruption in the dark before in real life. We eventually turned away and endured the two hour slog to get back to the other side of the island, entering the resort parking around midnight.
At the time all we knew was that the volcano was erupting, it didn’t happen every day, and we should try to see it while we were there. What we found out later was that this was “eruption 42,” with plumes 100 stories high (the height of the Empire State Building or four football fields long), and it started at ~1:30pm and stopped at 11:30pm, and the observation area where we parked was roughly a mile away from it. True to the report produced later, we did see the eruption go up and down in height while we were watching it, though it’s unclear if we saw the full 1,300 feet plume at any point due to this variation. The reporting makes it seem like what we were seeing was more like 800 feet, which is still substantial – to us anyway!
And yes, technically the Uekahuna overlook is closer, but that one (and the main visitor’s center) are closed for construction right now, so Kilauea Overlook was the closest anyone was going to get (without hiking or helicoptering) to this eruption.
Monday 2/15/2026
On Monday we slept in and then went back to Umeke’s for a brunch of poke. Honestly, it was unremarkable and overpriced (and tons of flies, which we didn’t really encounter elsewhere on the island). Then we went to Costco for gas and to shop for a GoPro to capture whatever would happen in the next two days worth of aquatic excursions. The only GoPro was $450 so we got ice cream instead and went to Walmart for a $10 cell phone underwater case. We’ve already seen two past gopro’s die slow painful deaths and they were always hard to operate underwater, so I wasn’t really enthused about spending a bunch of money to have that happen again.
We then went back to the hotel to prepare to watch the lu’au from our balcony, but slowly realized (and the front desk confirmed) they’d moved the lu’au inside the events center due to rain. So we went to the pool and sat in the hot tub, under very little rain. We went to bed early since we’d have to be at the docks at 8:15am the next morning and it would be a drive through the only heavily trafficked gridlocked road at rush hour on the whole island.
Tuesday 2/16/2026
We booked a “pelagic” tour for this morning. This is specifically a tour where they take you far out into the ocean on a small and fast boat to find wildlife. Over the years we’ve been disappointed in tours in Hawaii that advertise swimming with humpback whales and then once on the boat they explain this is illegal and not possible. They word the tour names stuff like “Humpback whale view and swim” to make it seem like you’re swimming with humpbacks, but really the “swim” is somewhere else and not in the presence of humpbacks at all. In 2024 they did this in Maui and even though humpbacks were maybe 200 yards from where we were swimming, they would not let anyone swim in that direction. When I booked this tour the lady on the phone said that wouldn’t be a problem with this one, we would plop down in the water and if the whales came over TO us we could just stay where we are and not approach.
Of course, as we were on this little tiny boat blasting over the waves out in the open Pacific Ocean the guide explained that “if any humpbacks approach us, we will have to get out of the water immediately.”
Sigh. I understand why the law protects these creatures, but I don’t know why every tour operator still lies about it. Regardless, they were clear we would definitely be able to get in the water with everything ELSE* out there, and so we set out to find what we could.
It’s not one of those giant boats where you lounge and people jump in the water with floaties, etc. This was six guests and three guides on a speedboat (the ocean is your bathroom) gunning it to find some action. We were mostly confident experienced swimmers aware of what we were getting into. This was a purpose driven tour for large wildlife, not going to a popular reef to see clownfish.
At the typical spot for sharks, an orange buoy of some kind, there were none. In between picking up trash out of the water our guides spotted dolphins leaping in the distance.
We ended up swimming with this energetic pod of dolphins twice since they enjoyed chasing after the boat. *The guide made it clear we weren’t allowed in the water with bottlenose dolphins, but these were some other type, so swimming with them was fine. I’m guessing, based on their constant jumping that these were spinner dolphins. These look like the larger “pantropical” variety because their dorsal fins are clearly curved.
With about an hour left our guides asked if we wanted to go to a more reliable spot that might have reef sharks or take a gamble on a tip over the radio from a fishing boat that somewhere farther out there were sperm whales breaching. Obviously, we all wanted to gamble. Our guides stressed how rare sperm whale sightings are, but we paid so it was our call. It was a very quick decision.
After a long time searching and bouncing off the waves at high speed we spotted a single lone juvenile (parents were probably in the middle of an hour long dive for food) more than happy to splash around and show off for us.
Unlike humpback whales, there are no laws against entering the water with sperm whales, only that you have to enter a certain amount of feet back and let them come to you. So we quickly donned our gear and jumped in the water as the kid started heading towards the boat.
Unfortunately it stopped breaching when we got closer, so I don’t have any photos of that, just his tail slapping, which is still a cool thing to see.
This far out the bottom was maybe 8,000 feet under us, and the crests of each wave were maybe three or four feet high. Not “bad” or rough to swim in for experienced swimmers, but very difficult to get clear photographs of anything that’s less than, well, right next to you because you’re floating and getting pulled up at the height of each wave, so whatever you’re trying to see ahead of you is also being pushed up and down and out of sight and back into sight. I tried just pointing my camera in the whales direction and pushing the shutter like mad, hoping it would come closer. I saw it’s big body swim to my left from maybe thirty or forty feet out and then it was just gone. Our guides had us swim in that direction for a minute but it never came back.
When I checked my photos back on dry land I discovered that the camera had only taken one photo. ONE! And of course it was on a wave swell so I just got a nice shot of an underside of a wave, no whale. (days later I would recognize the camera or perhaps the underwater housing has a defect that will make the shutter buggy and require a on/off restart to get it going properly again… unfortunately this was the first use of the camera on this trip so I didn’t know that yet)
A week after we got back I was watching all of Sam’s underwater videos, preparing to upload to YouTube and discovered something: she got a (albeit brief, shaky, blurry, and distant) video of the whale!
Here is that moment slowed down (by me with Resolve) and pointing out the gray/blue skinned animal floating near the surface of a blue ocean that’s shaking the camera around violently:
It’s almost impossible to see, so I recommend watching on a monitor and in the highest quality YouTube will allow (sadly, Sam’s video settings on her phone were set to HD, not 4K).
Viewing this later I’m wondering how positive our guides were on the identification of it being a sperm whale instead of a pilot whale or false killer whale since we never got a clear view of the head and all the tail fins for those species look very similar. That said, the pectoral fins do appear farther back on the body in Sam’s video which would be more indicative of a sperm whale, which has a giant head taking up a third of its body.
We hurried back to the harbor after that because another tip was radioed in that there was a whale shark there, but by the time we’d arrived it had gone on a long dive as well. Whale sharks are an animal we’ve tried to see many times but still haven’t, and that’s still true.
Our guides informed us that the sperm whale sighting was very special and they only encounter them about 8 times a year, and swim with them even less. Unlike humpbacks, they’re elusive ocean creatures, diving almost to the bottom of the pacific (at least offshore in Hawaii) to feed and have the largest brain of any animal alive, with a similar lifespan to humans. Due to whaling they were on the verge of extinction once and are still listed as “vulnerable” status. Although they have been seen in the Hawaiian islands, it’s not a primary breeding or feeding ground for them. I’m reading on the internet that between 2000 and 2021 there were only 52 confirmed sightings in Hawaii by a marine research group, most happening on deep water tours like ours. Most whale watching tours describe them as a “rare sight” so we were lucky to see that tail splashing let alone be in the water with one for a moment.
We got Pau Hana poke for lunch, which I’d recommend, and then the gang picked out Pawaii (?) beach to try to snorkel, but it turned out it was on private gated property. We headed south to try Two Step, but the rain got worse the farther south we went, so we went back to the hotel instead and spent a couple hours by the pool before visiting “Tasty Tuesdays” to eat dinner at the food trucks parked in front of the hotel.
Wednesday 2/17/2026
We started the day late and went to Kealakekua Bay for snorkeling. The only access is by jumping off the concrete harbor and the only way back out is by climbing back up the concrete by using a rope.
There was a fair amount of tropical fish, but much of the coral was bleached and dying, or perhaps consumed by the sea urchins that were everywhere. We didn’t stay in the water that long, but instead sat at the back of the pier with our legs dangling over the water snacking on chips.
Eventually we wanted a real meal so we went to a Japanese food truck for a late lunch and then headed back to the hotel.
In the evening we walked to the adjacent Keauhou Bay with our friends and took a night manta ray snorkeling tour. We’d done this on our previous trip, but this time the spot was directly in front of our hotel so it was much easier. Last time we were on a big boat with a ton of people, but this time we were on a small boat with maybe eight snorkelers clinging to a much smaller pipe raft. For those that aren’t familiar, the way this works is the boat takes you to a known manta feeding area and has you hang onto an apparatus with special lights (usually purplish or blue) that shine down and attract plankton. The mantas then show up to eat the plankton to the delight of the humans holding onto the lighting platform which is surrounded by a rail of pvc pipe. There were many rays, two of them bumping into me twice. Since this was at night there was no natural light so I decided to convert most of the blue photos to black and white.
Sam had her cell phone on in the waterproof thing and it struggled in the low light to maintain focus on the mantas, but you still get the idea.
Thursday 2/18/2026
We went for a leisurely brunch at Shaka Tacos and then drove up to Kukio Bay to snorkel. There were three or four different smaller honu there, some coming right up to the beach.
We got back to the hotel in time to make the first reservation at the hotel restaurant, which had a free bottle of wine for us (for our “anniversary”), which we split with our friends. We made sure to get the first reservation because we wanted to eat and then watch the Lu’au which was starting at the same time.
So after paying for the dinner we ran up to our lanai to catch the end of the lu’au. Years ago Sam and I paid to go to the Lu’au at the hotel in downtown Kona. The price has more than doubled since then, but we got it “for free” here since our hotel lanai had a direct view.
After the lu’au we went to the manta ray snorkeling watching spot at the hotel, or rather the path next to it because the real watching platform is under renovation. You can’t actually see them unless you’re in the water, unfortunately. Also unfortunately I forgot to take the ND filter off my camera lens and some locals showed up to go fishing on the rocks in front of the path so my night shots got…. weird…
Friday 2/19/2026
Today was the intentionally scheduled Volcanoes National Park day. We set out for Punalu’u black sand beach and were dismayed to find there the same exorbitant pricing app based scheme enacted back in downtown Kona. However, we were already there, they got us – so we paid. We walked around the beach and only ended up staying for maybe forty minutes before seeking lunch closer to Volcanoes. (Pro wheat allergy sufferers tip: the pizza place just outside the park entrance has cauliflower crust pizza!)
I spent most of my time at the black sand beach trying to capture the little yellow butterflies that were storming the mossy rocks. Here again, for half the time, I forgot to remove the ND filter (that I’d used for the glassy water shots) for the “action” shots, so they’re much more grainy and desaturated than I would have liked.
In Volcanoes National Park, we first visited the same site we visited on Sunday to watch the eruption, now just smoldering in the continuing rain.
After that we drove down to Holei sea arch, but didn’t stay long as the rain blew in from the west and started soaking us. At the lava tubes there was no parking so we drove back thru the rain to the hotel. At Holei the scene had changed. I wore the national parks shirt I bought there in 2014, but now the souvenir shop and information window is closed and boarded up. They also don’t let people walk out onto the arch any longer, which is probably a good thing since sea arches in other parts of the world have started collapsing in other parts of the world. Maybe a result of sea temperatures going up and eating away, or stressing more, the rocks in the arch?
Saturday 2/20/2026
Saturday looked like it was going to rain so we took a coffee farm tour in the morning.
We walked around the downtown Kona area for lunch (a virtual ghost town, maybe because of off and on again rain forecast) for a while and then went to Costco for more gas. Back at the hotel we ate more of our snacks to get rid of them and then said a last goodbye to our friends at the pool. They chose to take the red-eye at midnight on Saturday instead of the 5pm on Sunday afternoon, so they were going straight from the pool to the airport. Back at the hotel room we watched a wedding reception on the lanai, which quickly became annoying as the DJ pumped the loud music until 10pm.
2/21/2026
On our last half day in Kona we found another poke place for lunch, Reel Aloha Poke & Fish Co. They had pretty good poke, a nice seared fresh Ahi Katsu, and a side of pickled ogo, which is a type of seafood I don’t think I’d had before. The ogo texture is a little like hair, but once you get past that it’s a good side to mix with your poke, like a way more refined version of the pink pickled radish in Korean food.
We tried to finish it off with an acai smoothie from the shop next door, but it was a complete waste of time. There were two teenagers running the place, making out until a customer came in and then the boy still being totally useless and oblivious taking orders from the girl. $10 for a little coffee cup size blend of frozen costco acai and blueberries and ice. Sad.
Our flight was uneventful going back, but I’d prefer not to arrive past midnight from a destination only four hours from Los Angeles. In the days afterwards I’d struggle with jetlag more from this trip than from when we go to Japan or Europe.
