Woke to heavy rain. We had some left over fruit salad so ate this and then packed. Checkout time was 11:00am so had a swim in the rain in one of the pools beforehand. Left our luggage with the bell service guys and went for a walk. Had lunch at Denny's Diner, a US chain and I ordered the daunting 'All Americam Slam' which was basically bacon, scrambled eggs, a couple of thin sausages and toast. Very nice! (sorry Michelle)

https://www.dennys.com/food/breakfast/all-american-slam/

Caught the 'Speedi Shuttle' to the airport and flew to Kailua-Kona on The Big Island. We had booked a retal vehicle with Thrifty while on Kauai and so we presented ourselves to the Thrifty counter which was a short bus ride from the terminal. It was hot and there were quite a few people waiting. There were too few people serving and the system was slow and tedious. It took longer to get our car than it did to fly from Honolulu! We decided to upgrade to a 4WD and got a Nissan Armada. We were told this would get us anywhere. When I checked the fine print it said it excluded Mauna Kea road! The guy said it wasn't much more to upgrade but I thought that $60 per day extra didn't quite fit that comment. One could have bought a reasonable car back home for the total bill including full coverage insurance!

The staff there seemed to be very unhappy too as the building (a demountable cabin/school classroom type building)had no air-conditioning. When we got to our car, one of the staff had been sitting in it with the a/c running to cool off!

We drove to Waikoloa Village past lots of old lava flows and eventually found the Paniolo Greens Resort. Bought some supplies from the supermarket nearby and settled in.