Hawaiian Islands Cruise - The Big Island - Kona

After leaving the east coast of the Big Island, the next morning we arrived at Kailua Bay, Kona. As this bay doesn't have a dock big enough for our ship, passengers needed to be tendered in.

This means the cruise line uses its lifeboats to shuttle passengers into port. You can see an orange one in the foreground of this photo. The process was well organized and it was a smooth ride. 

Again, you can see the landscape is similar to that of Hilo, on the other side of the island.

Our initial plan was to just walk the harbour area, knowing we could come back when we’re on the house sit as it’s just over an hour’s drive from the house. However, we decided to take the Atlantis submarine tour.

I was certainly a little apprehensive as I don’t like confined spaces. However, I reasoned that if I can go in the air in a plane, then I should be able to go in the sea in a submarine.

The tour was about an hour and we reached a depth of 105 feet and yes, I took a photo to prove it! Greg commented that I only took the photo because the crew member was cute. That was a bonus, to be sure!

We saw some big fish, and some schools of colourful fish. However, given that we've snorkelled a lot, we didn't see too much new for us.

It was a first for us to see a shipwreck though, complete with skeletons! Apparently they used to dress the skeletons for the various holidays, but decided to stop when they dressed one as Santa. They had a few tours where the children aboard didn't seem to be enjoying themselves. It took a child to comment that they were upset to see Santa drowned for them to realize the problem.

We walked around for a short while, waiting for our submarine tour. Greg wanted his photo taken by this motorcycle. I didn't understand why at the time, but he later explained that it's the latest in the Honda line and comes complete with an automatic transmission.

After our tour, we went for a drink and snack nearby. Here we're on the pub's verandah, and you can see our ship in the background.

We enjoyed listening to some excellent live music, had a snack, and I sipped on a "lava flow". It seemed appropriate, given we'd recently passed by an active volcano!

 

We saw lots of colourful flowers in the town, some of which had a lovely scent. This flower was perched on a wall made of lava rock. We enjoyed visiting this town, so maybe will be back when we return to the Big Island.

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Hawaiian Islands Cruise - December 10 to 17
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Part 1 - Honolulu & Maui
Part 2 - The Big Island - Hilo
Part 3 - The Big Island - Kona
Part 4 - Kauai - Day 1 
Part 5 - Kauai - Day 2