Travel + Leisure - India & South Asia
WHY WE TRAVEL
A family is drawn to the volcano-hit Big Island.
Last year’s eruption of Kilauea scared some travellers away from the Big Island, but for Jesse Ashlock and his family, the mountain was part of the destination’s appeal—that, and a very nice hotel.
MY DAUGHTER, AGNES, is four, which means she asks questions like “Where does hot lava come from?” So after Hawaii’s Kilauea began erupting last May, we watched some lava videos together on YouTube. When I told her that we were going to visit the Big Island and she could see the volcano, she was excited, but said sternly,
“We just can’t get too close.”
Our destination was the
Four Seasons Resort Hualalai (doubles from ` 66,000; fourseasons.com), known for being the platonic ideal of family vacation destinations. But for a moment, another natural disaster— Hurricane Lane, briefly a Category 5 storm—loomed. The news media acted like Lane could spell the end of Hawaii as we know it, but the folks at the resort were blasé about it. And, sure enough, our family—Agnes; my son, Rex; my wife, Chi; and I—arrived to the moderately humid perpetual 29O Celsius for which Hawaii is so famous. After a POG (pineapple-orange-guava juice) in the lobby, we were ferried by electric cart along serpentine paths, past volcanic-rock walls and dense native plantings, to our tranquil Deluxe suite above King’s Pond, a man-made lagoon. Inside are more than 4,000 fish species, including a spotted eagle ray named Kainalu, which the kids would get to feed the next morning.
Walking the grounds, I came to see the Four Seasons Hualalai as an ingenious piece of social engineering. It’s laid out as a series of interlocking crescents, each speaking to a different life stage. At one end is King’s Pond; at the other, the golf course, with areas in between better suited for couples’ retreaters and families with older kids. The resort’s seven pools range from the shallow, sandy-bottomed Keiki Pool, for really little kids, to the adultsonly Palm Grove Pool, which has a swim-up bar that serves a sensational Hendrick’s-cilantro-cucumberjalapeño number called Cool and Spicy.
Chi and I took turns at the Palm Grove Pool while the kids napped. One afternoon, I was sitting in the pool with a novel and a Cool and Spicy, happy as a clam until I realised the basalt deck
I was leaning on was really quite hot. As if by magic, an attendant appeared with a towel. I left the tab open for Chi, who told me later that she’d been greeted by name and shown to a chaise that had been made up for her.
This kind of service—anticipatory, empathetic, always nearby but never intrusive—is like a glass of ice water on a hot day. At first it blows you away, and then it’s just quietly satisfying. We experienced it at Ulu Ocean Grill, when we had a dinner prepared by Thomas Bellec, the executive chef. Everything was marvellous: the craft cocktails, the Kona Kampachi crudo, the special grilled oyster Bellec brought Agnes when he found out she was a mollusk lover, and most of all, the double rainbow that appeared over the beach. And then, as can happen with jetlagged kids, everything went to pieces. Just as Bellec began carving the fresh whole snapper tableside, both children had meltdowns. “Go,” he told us. “I’ll have it sent to your room.” Minutes after Agnes and Rex fell asleep, a waiter arrived to set up a feast on the balcony. Chi and I sat in the dark, devouring that beautiful fish, drinking a lemony Sancerre, and listening to the waves.
Early one morning, I left my family to go on a group sunrise tour of Mauna Kea, the million-year-old dormant volcano that ancient Polynesians considered the belly button of the Hawaiian islands. “Thank you for not being afraid of the volcano, the hurricane, and the 2 am wake-up,” Justin Larkin, a guide from
& Trail (hawaii-forest.com), said as he drove us up the mountain in the early dawn. At first, the sunrise was like filigree lace edging the clouds, then it flooded us with celestial light. Just as cool was the shadow Mauna Kea projected onto the atmosphere, just west of Maui’s southern tip, which we could see in the distance. Maui, Larkin said, had begun life where Mauna Kea is now, before wandering over the eons to its current location. Set free for a moment from the realities of parental time, I marvelled at the slowness of geological time.
Since I’d told Agnes she’d get to see a volcano too, the hotel had arranged a tour for us with Paradise Helicopters
(paradisecopters.com). Our pilot, Keith Darby, kept up an affable patter about the sights below, from the white-sand beach where Captain Cook met his end to the green, mist-enshrouded coast near Hilo, where an ill-fated railroad once ran. Rex was airsick, and Agnes was more excited about asking me questions over her headset than the view. Eventually, they both fell asleep. We circled the black-and-umber crater of Kilauea, but it was obscured by steam. “Not to rub it in,” Darby said later, after we’d landed on a secluded mountaintop for a quick picnic, “but the lava flow was amazing until August.” The ebbing of the lava has been good for the Big Island, which has been able to reopen Volcanoes National Park. Agnes said that it was okay that she hadn’t seen the volcano, because “the helicopter was fun.” It was also okay, I decided, that I hadn’t seen any lava, because Hawaii was fun.
During one breakfast at Ulu, I chatted with our server, Tiffany, about the hurricane’s near miss. “For those of us who grew up on the island, each day is its own day,” she said. You get into that mindset quickly here. The next morning, Tiffany pointed out a pod of dolphins surfacing just offshore. As Agnes and Rex and I raced to the beach, one corkscrewed out of the water and landed with a splash.
Agnes turned to me, her face alight. “We saw a dolphin do a trick!” I was as excited as she was.