First Night In Kona

The Royal Kona Resort is a nice hotel, right in "downtown", near the Marina and right on the water. After getting cleaned up from the traveling and our first of many snorkel adventures, we headed down to the hotel bar "Huggos on the Rocks". This place was highly recommended to us by a Big Island native we met in Arizona. She grew up on the East side of the Island in Hilo.

We found a tall table near the water. On stage a local played songs on his guitar, slurring the words in such a laid back manner that I could hardly make out if he was speaking English or Hawaiian. An older lady got up on stage and danced the Hula to his singing and we ordered a couple of beers, that were way over-priced.

After one beer, we knew this wasn't the place for us. We took a walk across the street, behind the sand volleyball court that seemed to have a lot of people watching the game for a Tuesday evening. We stepped into a local sports bar called Scores.

What a big contrast there was between the tourist trap of Huggo's on The Rocks and the local, laid back hang out of Scores. The place was crowded, but not too much to be annoying. The people looked like they were genuinely having a good time and not just a bunch of tourists trying to look like they're having fun because "we're on vacation, damn it!" Most of the patrons were probably young locals that worked at the many different hotels in the area.

It was Taco Tuesday's so we order two Taco's for two bucks and two Corona's that were just as reasonable. I think we were able to stuff ourselves and have a couple drinks for the same price we paid at Huggo's for one beer each.

We struck up conversations with a couple of locals, Transplants from all over; Seattle, St. Louis, Florida and even Ireland. Our new friend, Paul from Seattle gave us a few good travel tips and suggestions. We told him that we weren't the type of people to do group tours, so he gave us some good ideas.

Before crossing the street, we stopped at the good ol' ABC store and picked up a Kona coffee cigar, a mini bottle of wine and a mini bottle of mudslide. Then down the street from the Royal Kona Resort, we sat on the wall as the waves crashed on the black rocky shore below us, sharing a cigar and drinking toasts to a great vacation ahead.