Prologue

A little over a year ago, our family purchased a small vacation condominium on the Kohala coast of the island of  Hawai'i. Our family of four simply fell in love with the place during a vacation. I was particularly hard-hit. I simply couldn't imagine not returning over and over for the remainder of my life. I've since met others who have had the same experience. Many simply moved there, and never looked back. This is not an option for us right now, so we visit as often as our bank-account will allow.

Though we are not of Hawaiian ancestry, my wife grew up on O'ahu and I myself spent my high school years living on Guam, so the Pacific Island thing runs strong through both of us. My own love of the Hawaiian Islands started when my parents lived on O'ahu for a time in my early twenties. It's hard to believe it took over twenty years for me to rediscover this incredibly beautiful land.

We are not wealthy and maintaining this property is a stretch for us. To offset the cost, we rent our place to well-qualified vacationers when we aren't using it. This blog grew out of the web site we created for this purpose WaikoloaBeachRental.com.

The Hawaiian language is certainly one of the most fascinating languages I've ever been exposed to. It is perhaps one of the most pleasant sounding languages ever to have evolved, lending itself naturally to poetry and music. It is at once simple, yet amazingly expressive and capable of layers and nuance. The history of the Hawaiian language is equally interesting and will be the topic of many of my posts.

The title of this blog means "the news" and the subtitle, "listen, people, to the news of the land". Since this blog is an extension of our web site for past and future guests of our vacation rental, the "news" to which I refer will be not be earth-shaking revelations and insider details on the goings on in the islands, I am not connected enough to provide such information. Instead, I'll focus on the people, places, and culture from an outsiders point of view.

In the process of visiting the island, and in helping others to do so, I've had so many thoughts and impressions that they would surely overflow the space available on the Waikoloa Beach site, so I will put them here. I hope that the traveler interested in making a deeper connection to Hawai'i will find this type of "news" helpful and entertaining.