THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII — The best arguments for visiting Hawaii's Big Island have always been elemental -- fiery volcanoes, trade winds raking black-lava badlands, jungle waterfalls draining down to beaches of many colors, rainbows as common as foreclosures in California's high desert.
But this year there's also a new chapter in the tale of two remarkable hotels.
One, the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, sprawls with 258 rooms on a perfect crescent beach at the northwestern end of the island. The other, Volcano House, sits with 42 rooms on the lip of the steaming Kilauea Caldera, 4,000 feet above the island's southeastern coast.
One was dreamed up in the 1960s by a Rockefeller with Asia on the brain. The other calls itself Hawaii's oldest hotel and counts Mark Twain among its customers.
One costs a fortune and just turned over a shiny new leaf. The other costs less, but still too much.
And both stand next to such natural wonders that even if you sleep elsewhere, it's worthwhile to stop by.
Mauna Kea
In early April, my family spent nights at both places and traced a four-day, 220-mile loop around the island. There were three in our rental car -- my wife, Mary Frances; our 4-year-old daughter, Grace; and me. About 27 miles from the Kona airport, along the resort corridor of the Kohala Coast, we found the spot where the late Laurance Rockefeller bravely plopped the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel.
It opened in 1965, startlingly sited at a white-sand beach just below miles of desolate black-lava slopes. The main building is sand-colored and blah at a distant first glance, like an eight-story shoe box forgotten between the beach and the resort's formidable championship golf course. But wait until you get up close and see the open-air lobby and atria, the scattered pieces of Asian art, the beach views.
Rockefeller wanted to merge East and West here, along with indoors and outdoors, and chose an orange plumeria logo that pops nicely against the turquoise water. About 1,600 Asian sculptures and textiles are peppered around the property. If you were rich in the '60s, this was the place to be.
Affluent families from all over made it an annual destination and clung to it and its customs (the nightly conch call to dinner, the Saturday clambake) even as its '60s flourishes aged and faded. In 2006, when the American Institute of Architects surveyed Americans on their favorite 150 buildings in the country, the Mauna Kea ranked 55th.
