The Holiday Experience: A Unique Gift Guide The Holiday Experience: for the Adventurous Student on a Budget
By Taylor “U‘i” Barongan
Photos courtesy of organizations
While shopping on Etsy or at local farmer’s markets — and let’s be honest, sometimes Amazon — are great ways to find gifts for loved ones, it can be tough to narrow down the best gifts to thoughtfully represent your love and admiration. Hilo at a glance may seem like a hard place to find the perfect present, but what many do not think about is gifting experiences rather than gifting material items. The following list includes fun, educational, and adventurous tours personally approved by the author. Each item on the list has essential information on the history of the tour, how long each tour is, what each tour costs, whether or not there is a kamaʻāina discount (discount when you show your Hawaiʻi ID), what each visitor takes away from the tour, and most importantly - how good the gift shop is.
On this page:
Hawaiʻi Island and Ocean Tours - Manta Ray Night Snorkel
The Manta Ray Night Snorkel in Keauhou Bay is an esoteric experience for anyone, and Kailua-Kona is one of the only places on Earth where you can swim with the rays so close to shore. The tour has been running night dives for 11 years, ensuring that the tour is jam-packed with information on the manta rays out in the ocean. The tour starts off with a brief rundown of the manta ray’s habitat and a quick change into some warm wetsuits. Then, a short boat ride takes visitors to the manta site where there is a ring of lights used to attract plankton — the manta ray’s food — and floatation devices for visitors to hold onto. From there, vis- itors are able to float with the manta rays and watch as they glide around the area, feeding on zooplankton in the glowing light. Visitors essentially get 30-40 minutes to view the manta rays through snorkeling masks while floating peacefully on the surface of the ocean. While there is no gift shop, the tour itself is more than enough to gift your loved ones this season.
Adults: $111
Children: $80
Duration: 1.5 hours Location: Keahou bay Contact: +1 (808) 313- 1116 or hawaiiislandandoceantours@gmail.com
Kamaʻāina discount
Atlantis Submarines Kona
The Atlantis Submarine tour in Kona makes a wonderful gift for the whole family. The tour is an unfor- gettable once-in-lifetime experience that any local or tourist would appreciate. Atlantis Submarines have been running their tours since 1988, and guarantee a well established and safe route for visitors to explore. Centered on Ali’i Drive, the tour departs from the bay and ventures around a 25 acre natural coral reef. Once in the submarine, visitors descend 100 feet underwater and encounter two shipwrecks. White-tipped reef sharks, manta rays, butterfly fish, and rainbow fish have all been spotted on previous tours and graced visitors with a little parade. Each tour accommodates up to 48 passengers with an air-conditioned seating area. Visitors learn about Kona’s reef with the help of trained tour guides who point out and identify the aquatic life around the submarine. Once the tour is over, the gift shop has postcards and stuffed animals to send or take home.
Adults: $124
Children (12 and under and at least 36 inches): $48 Duration: 45 mins
Location: Kailua-Kona,
Aliʻi Drive
Contact: +1 (808) 326-7827 Kamaʻāina discount
Kanaloa Octopus Farm
The Kanaloa Octopus Farm in Kona is e interacting with them. The Kanaloa Octopus Farm is a cephalopod aquaculture research center dedicated to researching the Day Octopus’s (Octopus cyanea) life stages, as it is the only diurnal octopus species in Hawaiʻi. The tour takes visitors around the Kanaloa facilities while teaching visitors about the octopus’s lifestyle and stages of life. When there are octopus eggs present at the facilities from shipments, visitors may even get to see a newborn octopus in a microscope! For the next two-thirds of the tour, visitors are able to feed and potentially interact with the adult octopi in their enclosures. Visitors come away from the tour having interacted with an octopus and learned lots of fun facts about the mysterious octopus. The gift shop contains cute merchandise including T-shirts, plushies, and stickers alike - perfect for the octopus lover in your life!
Adults (age 5+) = $50 Children (age 6 and under) = $40
Children (under age1) = Free Duration: 1 hour
Location: 73-970 Makako Bay Dr, Kailua-Kona, HI 96740 Contact: +1 (808) 747-6895 or info@kanaloaoctopus.com Kamaʻāina discount
Sharkey’s Chocolate Making Tour
Hilo Shark’s Coffee has been a staple coffee shop in Honomu for over a decade, using locally sourced and sustainably grown coffee beans, cacao, vanilla, and tea. Owner Tom Sharkey has been farming all his products on his beautiful farm on the Hamakua Coast, and offering tours to promote education and foster a passion for agriculture in Hawaiʻi. Sharkey has been doing his tours for roughly two years now through Airbnb. He also does private tours and school group education tours. On his two hour farm tour, Sharkey takes his visitors around his home farm and demonstrates how cacao, vanilla, and coffee are grown and harvested. He allows each visitor to try his cacao products including his cacao tea, chocolates, and shortbread. He lets his visitors taste each stage of the cacao as it is processed, and then opens his kitchen to visitors so they can make their own batch of chocolate to take home. Sharkey’s tours are a great place to learn about how chocolate is made and each visitor truly comes away with an in-depth understanding of the process. On tours, Sharkey has been known to send visitors home with their very own vanilla and cacao plants, as well as a tube of vanilla, and of course, lots and lots of chocolate. For those students living in dorms, these plants would be a wonderful addition to the community garden. Sharkey has his very own little gift shop on site that is full of all of his locally grown products perfect for stocking stuffers or additional gifts on top of the tour.
For more information about price and bookings, visit the Hilo Shark’s Hawaiʻi website. You can also read a review at https://hawaiianislands.com/big-island/things-to-do/hilo-sharks-chocolate-farm Duration: 2-3 hours Location: Hamakua Coast Contact: Visit website for more details Kamaʻāina discount
Crown Hawaiian Chocolate
Tom Menezes’s Hawaiian Crown Plantation and Chocolate Factory farm tour starts on the Hamakua coast and invites visitors to learn about the early stages of cacao processing and how cacao is grown. Owner Tom Menezes received his bachelor’s degree in Tropical Agriculture from the University of Mānoa and has been making chocolate for the past 15 years. His extension work and research with the USDA prompted him to start farming crops such as kalo and guavas, and eventually led Menezes to grow cacao 35 years ago. Menezes has been farming for 45 years on three different islands. On the farm, visitors learn everything there is to know about cacao farming and harvesting using Menezes’s extensive knowledge. After the farm tour, visitors drive down to the Hilo Hawaiian Crown chocolate shop to see how chocolate is made and taste the variety of flavors Hawaiian Crown offers including māmaki, dark, and milk chocolate. Visitors observe chocolate as it is being made in the kitchen for them to later order off the shop’s menu. In the gift shop, visitors are able to buy an assortment of chocolates and food for the road. The chocolates come in all flavors, shapes, and sizes and are the perfect stocking stuffer or holiday snack.
Adults (age 5+) = $20
Children (age 2-5) = $15
Children (under age 2) = Free
Duration: 1 hour
Location: Hamakua Coast
Contact: 1+(808) 319-6158 or hawaiiancrownhilo@gmail.com
Kamaʻāina discount
Honomu Goat Dairy farm
The Honomu Goat Dairy farm is a charming little property on the Hamakua Coast run primarily by Bill and Mary Henning and their daughter, Audrey. Though it is not necessarily a tour and is more of a farm stand with a petting zoo, this property functions as an educational area focused on brightening the days of everyone who visits. Visitors come to interact with the goats and inquire about how goat milk products are made. Occasionally the goat farm petting zoo includes baby goats that visitors can feed and play with - and maybe even do goat yoga with. The farm includes visitations with turkeys, dairy goats, fluffy chickens, and ducks. The petting zoo is free but with a donation of $5, visitors can feed and get the opportunity to become friends with the goats. The farmstand gift shop is filled with repurposed handcrafted items, cheeses, cara- mel, fudge, soap, and occasionally jam. As Bill and Mary put it, “It’s just a family farm that gives us outlets for our curiosity and creativity.”
Adults: Free
Children: Free
Duration: 30 mins Location: Hamakua Coast
Contact: +1 (808) 785-5546