kona

Morgan Brown

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Books that Morgan
Recommends...

Hawaii the Big Island Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
By Andrew Doughty and Harriett Friedman. Excellent guidebook. Much better than the Lonely Planet series, since it gives opinions. Good, detailed information for hiking and snorkeling.


Kona and Hilo are the Big Island's two major cities, i.e., the ones with international airports and the largest populations. In many ways, they are mirror images. Hilo, a sleepy old sugar town, is exposed to the moist trade winds on the island's east coast and receives much rain. Kona, on the other hand, receives hardly any rain. The new Kailua-Kona International Airport was constructed on top of a 1802 lava flow from Mauna Loa, so a Kona tourist's first impressions of the city are stark, indeed. Kona owes much, if not all of its current livelihood to the tourist industry, while Hilo purports to shun tourists.

As cities go, Kona is somewhat indistinct and decentralized. Kim and I stayed at the Royal Kona Resort, once a Hilton, but now a "mega-hotel" owned by a package-vacation company. While it wasn't the Four Seasons, the price was comparatively reasonable, and the location, on the southern edge of congested downtown Kona, permitted quick escapes for each morning's activities.


Click on small images to start "slide show"
ko01-kona-harbor.jpg (79 KB)


Kona's harbor. The thatched h...
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Morgan and the view from our b...
ko03-kim-balcony.jpg (111 KB)


Kim and the view from our balc...
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Kim and the view from our balc...
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Coffee beans (unshucked) at th...
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Shucked coffee beans drying in...
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Banana tree at the Greenwell C...
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Colorful lily on grounds of Pa...
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If you're driving between Keal...
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The Kona Coffee Shack (in Hona...
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The Kona Coffee Shack (in Hona...
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The Kona Coffee Shack (in Hona...
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The Kona Coffee Shack (in Hona...



© 2006 , Stanford Exploration Project
Department of Geophysics
Stanford University

Modified: 05/07/06, 19:23:16 PDT , by morgan
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