Now it’s time to say goodbye to the amazing Hawaii… (say that like the Mickey Mouse song). Well, we still had several hours to kill before our flight, but we were pretty bummed when we woke up in the morning.
We got dressed in our comfy travel clothes and walked over to Big Island Breakfast. This is the only true breakfast restaurant in the hotel and it’s a buffet that costs like $40 a person. We decided to only do this once because that adds up over 7 days and we could never eat our moneys worth.
The buffet offered a ton of variety and we were super excited to eat EVERYTHING! WE started with the basics; bacon, eggs, spam, rice, potatoes. We then moved on to malassadas. These are deliciously fried Portuguese donuts.
We then ventured into another room that were full of Asian breakfast staples like miso soup and chicken jook. There was tofu and seaweed and some many yummy toppings. I wish I discovered this room first, but I was too full to eat more than a few bites.
Last, but certainly not least Tom went and made his own waffles. He topped them with passion fruit syrup, whipped cream, and sprinkles.
After breakfast, we went back to the room to say our goodbyes and grab our bags. I tried the whole trip to get a picture of the dolphins in the pool outside our room and I finally did.
We then decided to take sometime to truly appreciate the hotel. A lot of the hallways are setup like a little history museum so we explored and read all about Hawaii.
We wanted to just enjoy the hotel one last time. We ordered our final cocktails. I of course had to have a lava flow. We then relaxed along the shore.
The sun was super hot and we both wished we had our bathing suits to change into. The only solution was to head down to the pool and kick our feet in the water like little kids. It’s actually very refreshing.
We then went for lunch at the Kona Taproom. This is separate from the brewery and is located in our hotel. Here we had a couple more Kona Beers and some really tasty food.
Tom ordered the pulled short rib sliders, toasted house-made brioche slider bun, sriracha aioli, fried quail egg, green onions, shaved romaine, house-made chips. These were really tasty, but pretty small. The meat was super tender and the sauce very flavorful and nothing beats some egg yolk.
I opted for the lobster tots, tater tots, sriracha aioli, lobster, pico de gallo, green onion. These were basically tater tot nachos with lobster! If you know me at all you know this made for me! It was mostly tater tots, but I can’t complain about that.
We washed all this food down with a Lemongrass Luau (my favorite refreshing Kona beer) and Fire Rock Pale Ale. Both perfect with upscale bar foods.
Full from our lunch we decided to take a hike along the shoreline of the hotel. It’s absolutely beautiful there.
We took a moment standing along the pacific ocean to just bask in this amazing place. We were so lucky to be standing there, having a once in a lifetime moment.
The hike inspired us to explore a bit more. We hopped in Blue and drove over to the shopping center on the hotel property. If you remember from our pervious post there’s a ton of lava to venture out on over there. Now that we were appropriately dressed it seemed like a good idea.
It was really cool walking on the lava and down into a rather large pit at one point. All this walking was starting to make us hungry again. We had to leave for the airport in an hour (making sure to give us the appropriate 2 hours ahead of our flight) so it was time for one last meal.
We went back to Island Gourmet and picked up some sushi and poke. It was much better than other grocery store sushi, but nothing beats Umekes.
Once we were finished eating it was time for one last good bye before heading to the airport. We took in our surroundings and it was not lost on us how truly lucky we were to experience such an incredible place. This is a once in a lifetime experience.
Now before we close out this trip we want to give you some tips we picked up at the airport. You do NOT need the full 2 hours at the airport. We got through security in about 30 seconds and then sat in the hot mosquito filled airport until our redeye flight back to Colorado. You do also go through the agriculture security before boarding your flight which we found interesting, but again you need an hour tops. If we had known this we would have planned out our last day a little better.
Hawaii truly was an incredible experience. We made memories that we will will treasure forever. Have you ever been to the Big Island? What was your favorite part?
The Cocho Life 