Scaled Down Luxury
The next day, I head back along the coast to Kona Village Resort for a yoga class and lunch. The yoga instructor, Heidi, also teaches Pilates and a selection of movement classes including Tai Chi and Qi Gong. Her classroom is a lawn of soft green grass beneath tall, swaying palms. When I ask her about her perception of this island’s healing properties, she smiles in a way that makes me think she knows a secret. As we linger beneath the gently moving trees, she explains that the confluence of ocean, volcanoes, healing plants, and spiritual energy found here on the Big Island seem to exert a positive power that effects not only residents, but guests as well.
It’s definitely affecting me. I love the low-key island experience that Kona Village offers, including the individual, thatched-roof hales that serve as guest rooms, facing either lava fields, ocean, or ancient fishponds. The lovely spa features treatment rooms fronted by cascading waterfalls, and holistic treatments built around the use of indigenous island products including ginger, seaweed, coconut, and sea clay.
This place is also one of the few sites in Hawaii to boast ancient petroglyphs, or Ki’i Pohaku. Estimated to be between 1,500 to 3,000-years-old, the signs and pictures carved into the lava rock predate the arrival of the Polynesians to the islands. Both their origin and meaning are unknown, and this particular location includes a number of symbols and drawings not found anywhere else in the Hawaiian Islands. I follow a boardwalk through the lava rocks, spotting several of the canoe sails, turtles, and paddling men that number among the 440 drawings that have so far been identified. It’s hard to determine if the human figures are male or female, and I can’t help think that the graceful lines of some of the petroglyphs signify that at least one of the artists was female.
Pele’s Gift
The next day, I find my way to Mandara Spa at the Waikoloa Beach Marriot Resort. My therapist delivers a skilled Lomi Lomi massage. Purely Hawaiian in origin, the rhythmic movements and long strokes are designed to sweep the muscles free of stress and stiffness. While Lomi Lomi is now available at spas throughout the world, it was once a secret guarded from the outside world, passed down from generation to generation within native families.
Completely relaxed, I head back to my hotel to pack for my flight home. The drive once again takes me along the dazzling coast, through ancient lava fields on which countless visitors have left messages spelled out in white coral rock. The Hawaiians say that the cooled lava is Pele’s blanket, spread across the island that she loves so well. And, though eruptions of Kilauea are attributed to her passionate and unpredictable temper, the goddess maintains a strong following of devout believers.
I contemplate the contradiction of how an eruption can be simultaneously an act of destruction and one of creation, and decide that the power and beauty of both are really, beneath it all, inseparable. Even as lava flows from Kilauea’s mouth down the slopes to the sea, wiping out everything in its path, it adds to the island’s ground mass as it cools, forming new land. Only a goddess could be capable of such a female act, giving birth amidst destruction.
Divine Addresses
The Fairmont Orchid & Spa Without Walls
(808) 885-2000
www.fairmont.com
Kona Village Resort
(808) 325-5555
www.konavillage.com
Four Seasons at Historic Hualalai
(808) 325-8440
www.fourseasons.com/hualalai
Mauna Lani Resort & Spa
(808) 881-7922
www.maunalani.com
Hilton Waikoloa Village Kohala Sports Club & Spa
(808) 886-1234
www.hiltonwaikoloavillage.com
Mandara Spa Waikoloa Beach Marriot Resort & Spa
(808) 886-6789
www.marriott.com
July/August 2008
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