Tales of the South Pacific - Kona

Cruise Day 8

Monday, October 6, 2025

Today we are in Kona on The Big Island of Hawaii, but we had nothing planned for the day, so we slept in a little.  When we got up and went out on our balcony, we got our first taste of what it’s going to be like for the rest of this cruise.  It was only in the eighties, but with the high humidity and the sun shining directly on us, it seemed very hot, and it is only going to get worse from here.

This is a map of the South Pacific and the area is commonly called Oceania.  It is divided into three areas - Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia.  We'll spend most of our time in Polynesia, but we will visit Kiribati in Micronesia and Fiji in Melanesia.  The Hawaiian Islands, where we are today, are considered part of Polynesia.  This map lacks the detail to show the individual ports, but I'll mark each area as we visit it.

The Hawaiian Islands, our port today is Kona on the east coast of "The Big Island".

We sail into Kona, our first port of the cruise.

A tender heads to shore.

After breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, we hung around our room for a bit, but just before ten we decided to head down to the tenders and go ashore to Kona.  There is no ship pier in Kona, so we will be brought ashore by using a few of the ships lifeboats that double as tenders.  Because we are in a Neptune Suite and are Five-Star Mariners (Holland America’s loyalty program) we have priority tendering which means we don’t have to get a tender ticket, we can just go directly to the tenders.

There was a bit of a line waiting to board the tender, but it went quickly, and we were on our way to shore.  It didn’t take long to get to shore, and from the tender pier we started walking along the waterfront where there are restaurants and shops.  The real downtown area is too far to walk too, but this will be fine for us today.  Back in April of 2017 we and some friends of ours rented a house in the nearby town of Captain Cook, so we are familiar with the area and have seen most of the nearby sights, so we were happy just to walk along the waterfront and peek into some of the shops. 

There was a very nice lagoon right next to the tender pier.

The Kamakahonu National Historic Landmark was also across from the tender pier, you can see the our ship anchored in the background.

We noticed a lot of signs about  the Iron Man competition and saw a lot of athletic looking men and women around and upon checking, we found that the 2025 Women’s Ironman Championship is being held in Kona  and started yesterday, October 7th and ending on October 13.  The men’s championship was held in France back in September.  Since the Ironman competition was started in Hawaii, it’s fitting to have women’s championship here. 

We started our walk along the waterfront.

We got a better view of our ship anchored out in the harbor.

We passed the Hulihe'e Palace, the Hawaiian Royalty summer home that is now a museum.

In our previous visit, we found a shop selling some delicious chocolate balls called Donkey Balls.  The name itself catches your attention, but their wonderful flavor makes you want more.  The shop where the original Donkey Balls are made on the premises was too far away to walk to but according to Google, there was a shop that sells them in the area we were walking in so I was in search of that.  Sadly, when I got to the shops, it was out of business, no Donkey Balls for us on this trip.

I did find a Hilo Hatties that sells Hawaiian clothing and other souvenirs so I went in to see if I could find an Aloha Shirt that I liked.  I think they may also be called Tropical Shirts and I like them because they are lightweight and very comfortable especially in hot and humid climates.  When you think of Aloha shirts you think of very bright and sometimes quite garish shirts, but I like a more subdued shirt and found just what I was looking for and made my first purchase of the trip.  Val didn’t find anything she liked, so after wandering around a bit more, we headed back to the tender pier to catch the tender back to the ship.

While waiting for the next tender to arrive, we sat in the shade and drank some ice water the ship was providing that really hit the spot.  The tender soon arrived, and we were quickly back on the ship.  This will probably be the first of many times I say this on this cruise, but the air conditioning on the ship sure felt so good when we got back inside.

After cooling off a bit, we headed for lunch in the Lido and then relaxed for a while.  I got back on my computer and updated the blog and then spent the rest of the afternoon out on the balcony.

We did go to trivia at four and once again we were in the middle of the pack, not the worst and not the best.  I’m not a big trivia fan, but I do enjoy getting to know our teammates and having interesting conversations before and after trivia.

We returned to the room and Val again went out to the balcony to read, but I wanted to download all the pictures I’d taken with my cell phone and camera today, so I did that before joining Val on the balcony.

We sail away from Kona.

The casino will be closed the entire time we are in Hawaiian waters, so after dinner tonight there was no casino for us, so we returned to our room and read until it was time for bed.  We were going to call it an early night anyway tomorrow is the first of three days in Honolulu and we have an early ship excursion scheduled and have to be up at seven.  There was a beautiful full moon tonight so we spent some time on the balcony watching the moon rise before calling it a night.