2 Best Sights in Big Island, Hawaii

On February 14, 1779, famed English explorer Captain James Cook was killed here during an apparent misunderstanding with local residents, and this 27-foot-high obelisk marks the spot where he died. He had chosen Kealakekua Bay as a landing place in November 1778. Arriving during the celebration of Makahiki, the harvest season, Cook was welcomed at first. Some Hawaiians saw him as an incarnation of the god Lono. Cook's party sailed away in February 1779, but a freak storm forced his damaged ship back to Kealakekua Bay. Believing that no god could be thwarted by a mere rainstorm, the Hawaiians were not so welcoming this time. The theft of a longboat brought Cook and an armed party ashore to reclaim it. Shots were fired, daggers and spears were thrown, and Captain Cook fell, mortally wounded. A white obelisk monument to the man is located at Kaawaloa, at the north end of the bay. 

A statue of Kamehameha the Great, the famous king who united the Hawaiian Islands in the early 19th century, stands watch over his descendants in North Kohala. The 8½-foot-tall figure wears the king's sacred feather kihei, mahiole, and kaei (cape, helmet, and sash). This is actually the original of the statue fronting the Judiciary Building on King Street in Honolulu. Cast in Florence in 1880, it was lost at sea. A replica was commissioned and shipped to Honolulu, but the original statue was found later in a Falklands Island junkyard. It now stands in front of the old Kohala Courthouse in Kapaau, next to the highway on the way toward Pololu Valley. Every year on King Kamehameha Day (June 11), Kohala residents honor their most famous son with a celebration that involves a parade and draping the statue in dozens of handmade floral lei.