HAWAII'S BIG ISLAND II: Resorts of the Kohala Coast

HAWAII'S BIG ISLAND II Resorts of the Kohala Coast Story and photography by Margaret & Eric Anderson We all have our favorite places on the southern Californian shore so it's tempting to stay put even as Hawaiian Airlines gives us a new nonstop from SAN to Hawaii. But if we don't check out new places we'll have nothing to compare San Diego to and, more important, never get to meet new people, persons unlike us who still live in our great land, America. And what could be more safe and different than the Hawaiian islands?

	It's surprising that the northwest side of Hawaii's Big Island, dry as a bone, has become one of the prime resort areas of the Pacific. Hilo on the east side gets 200 inches rain a year; Kona on the leeward side gets less than ten. So the Kohala Coast wasn't green like the rest of the islands, the coastline was rocky, and the land was black with 'a'a lava from 13,677 foot-high Mauna Loa, eruptions said by the locals to be the wrath of the goddess Pele. But Laurance S. Rockefeller saw the possibilities. He built his Mauna Kea Beach Hotel 30 years ago, the first of the Rockresorts planned to preserve untouched America. Other developers followed.


"We call our developers 'lava farmers,'" says Sharon Sakai, administrative director of the Kohala Coast Resort Association, a group of eight luxury resorts strung down the coast like plumeria blossoms on the traditional welcoming lei (800-318-3637 www.kkra.org ). All the resorts have a marvelous climate year-round - there's less temperature variation there between summer and winter than between day and night. On the leeward side of the island, they all enjoy the low rainfall and reduced humidity that made Hawaiian royalty choose to live there. And all share the same warm Pacific Ocean, maintain great golf courses and magnificent swimming pools, world-class restaurants and attentive staff. Yet are all unbelievably different.
	The Mauna Kea Beach, the original, is Old World upscale Hawaii: Asian art, Oceana furnishings, island mystique, possibly the best lu'au and certainly the best beach on the Big Island. It's owned by Prince Hotels which has now built the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel next door as one of its 82 world-wide hotels.

	The Hapuna Beach Prince is more open and its rooms are bigger; it has an airy feel somewhat like the best of Southern California resorts. In contrast, the Mauna Kea has a dark-wood, private feel to it as if you are in the very large home of a wealthy Pacific Islander - and, in a way, you are.