Text size:

Kona is a haven for kids

BY EILEEN OGINTZ | TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

The first time the Houskas vacationed at Kona Village on the Big Island of Hawaii, Judy Houska was pregnant with her first child. The next year, they celebrated Joe Houska's 40th birthday. Then it was Joe and Judy's 10th anniversary.

"We finally admitted that we would go every year because it was where we wanted to be with our family more than any place in the world," said Joe, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and has been vacationing at Kona Village for more than 20 years.

Consider yourself extremely lucky if you have such a special vacation place. Maybe it's a small resort on Cape Cod. Maybe it's a Minnesota lakefront, a certain ski town or a favorite camping spot. Maybe it's a place where you vacationed as a child and that you now share with your kids. While other resort hotels routinely change their images and owners, and expand their spas and their pools, Kona Village, built on the site of an old Hawaiian fishing village along the Kohala Coast, has been an icon there for more than 40 years. Luckily, it and other nearby hotels sustained no damage from the Oct. 15 earthquake that occurred northwest of the Big Island. All are operating as usual.

Living simply

And just as your own favorite vacation spot wouldn't please everyone, neither would Kona Village. Though it's as expensive as the swankiest Hawaiian resort - all-inclusive rates can run more than $800 a night for a family of four - there is no air conditioning, no television, no high-speed Internet, no phones (guests are asked to limit cell phone use to their rooms). There are thatched-roof bungalows called "hales" where a painted coconut serves as a do-not-disturb sign. Giant sea turtles laze on the beach. At breakfast you're asked which of the two dining rooms you would prefer and what time you want to eat.

The resort is small: just 125 hales and a world away from Hawaii's mega-resorts, where it's necessary to stake out a beach chair in the morning. That ambience - the two-person hammocks strung in the trees, the exotic birds, the solitude, the gorgeous beach on Kahuwai Bay, the complimentary tennis clinics and, most important, the chance to experience what Hawaii once was - is what draws families back again and again (70 percent of visitors are repeat guests).

"There are difficult moments, certainly," Joe Houska said in an e-mail after vacationing at Kona Village with his sons after his wife's death. "But not going there would be a bit like not going back to the home where Judy and I raised our sons. There are at least 30 staff members who we consider friends."

Haven for kids

That sentiment is echoed by Lani Opunui, the resident historian who has been at Kona Village for more than 25 years and hosts the Friday-evening luau. "By the second day, if we don't know the kids' names, we know their faces," Opunui said.

Every day, kids (and parents) have the chance to hear staffers "talk story" about the island and to learn crafts, making reed baskets one day, shell necklaces another. (There are no children's activities in May and September.) Kids can eat dinner with their parents or join them after their "keiki" dinner.

Check konavillage.com for special deals that offer a fifth night free until Dec. 16. Longtime guests suggest forsaking the beachfront for less-expensive rooms.

Even teens are happy at Kona Village.

Aaron Houska, 17, said, "You snorkel, you lie on the beach, you talk ... but you never get bored." My two girls certainly didn't.

There isn't another all-inclusive resort like Kona Village in Hawaii, certainly, and probably few elsewhere in the country.

"I love that once you pay you don't have to think about money," said Linda Kelly, who was visiting with her husband and two young daughters. "This place is perfect with little kids." For big kids, too.

"There are so many happy, good memories here," Houska said. "It's important to come back."