Una More Grande

[Rolando Kumar]

In 2008, I started Grande Cosmetics with a single product, GrandeLASH-MD. Today, we've expanded the line and we now carry over 40 products that not only help you to have longer, more luscious looking lashes, but also plumper lips, bolder brows and fuller looking hair."

Honoring the Kilolani, the stargazers of ancient Hawaiʻi who looked to the skies to navigate their course, the Kilolani Spa experience reflects the tranquility, peace, and stillness of the sky in tune with the natural currents of the world.

The entirety of Grand Wailea's rooms and suites have been refreshed and exquisitely transformed. Any accommodation you book features luxurious new designs and finishings, including our exclusive and private Napua rooms and suites for enjoyment.

Newly launched in June 2024, our eleven luxurious wellness-focused guest rooms feature carefully curated amenities including Therabody compression boots, meditation googles, an air purifier and more to optimize personal wellbeing, travel rejuvenation and restful sleep.

Savor the flavors of our island home by indulging in our range of imaginative culinary experiences, including brunch with a view at ʻIkena, special pop-up events at Botero Lounge, gourmet made-to-order and grab-and-go options at Loulu, authentic Italian dishes infused with local Hawaiian ingredients at Olivine, and our latest venue, Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, our award-winning signature seafood restaurant.

This one-of-a-kind experience includes a guided tasting featuring three specialty wines thoughtfully paired with curated appetizers by our Executive Sous Chef. Whether you're a seasoned wine enthusiast or a curious newcomer, our intimate setting promises an unforgettable culinary adventure.

Sip & Savor at 'Ikena, Grand Wailea's destination for Sunday seafood brunch. Take in the Pacific views while enjoying a complimentary glass of ros, featuring gourmet local selections and a sumptuous seafood buffet including a smoked carving station, fresh ceviche bar, crab claws, shrimp cocktail, and more.

The Rio Grande, which flows out of the Rockies and later forms the U.S.-Mexico border, has long been impacted by withdrawals for agriculture and other uses. Now, rising temperatures and an unprecedented drought pose a grave and growing peril to the river and its ecosystems.

Hiking through the emerald green canopy of the bosque, or riverside cottonwood forest, near downtown Albuquerque, Tricia Snyder, an advocate for WildEarth Guardians, believes zero hour has arrived for the Rio Grande. Though the river this day is high and a rich chocolatey-red color, water levels are historically low and dropping precipitously. Experts predict the Rio Grande will dry up completely all the way to Albuquerque this summer for the first time since the 1980s.

The story of the Rio Grande is similar to that of other desert mountain rivers in the U.S. Southwest, from the Colorado to the Gila. The water was apportioned to farmers and other users at a time when water levels were near historic highs. Now, as a megadrought has descended on the West, the most severe in 1,200 years, the flows are at crisis levels.

In the last few years, I have been writing about the impact of the worst drought in the West in more than a millennium on the rivers of the Southwest. I have traveled the length of the Colorado River and the Gila River, which is located in New Mexico and Arizona.

Profound anthropogenic changes have exacerbated that, and in many places there has been ecosystem collapse, with more in the offing. Wetlands and cottonwood bosque have dried up, and species have disappeared. As climate change bears down, scientists and other experts are asking what can be done to fend off such changes and increase resilience for the 6 million people and countless birds, mammals, and reptiles that depend on the river?

This year, the runoff into the upper Rio Grande was a month earlier than normal. A changing climate has meant less snow in the San Juan Mountains, and 10 of the last 11 years have seen below-average snowpacks; last year the snowpack was 58 percent of normal, this year 63 percent.

After years of heavy overpumping of local aquifers, the state in 1969 passed a law requiring sustainable aquifer pumping. That meant some San Luis Valley irrigators have to replenish 400,000 acre-feet of groundwater to the aquifers. To allow the aquifer to refill, wells are being shut down and more will have to be taken out of production. Replacement water is expensive and growing more so. It has, and will continue, to put farmers out of business.

In addition, a phenomenon called vapor pressure deficit is increasing, which means that the warming atmosphere is wicking more water out of the snow, the land, trees, rivers, and streams. While temperature is rising in a linear way, this atmospheric thirstiness is growing exponentially.

These climate change-driven phenomena have created a new and unpredictable era for water in the West. Natural systems usually function within a predictable range of variability. Water apportionment, on the Rio Grande and elsewhere, is based on that concept. But staying within these predictable ranges no longer applies because of the unprecedented warming and its impact on natural processes.

After the Rio Grande leaves Colorado, it flows into northern New Mexico and becomes a classic mountain river, rushing through thick forests and 1,000-foot-deep canyons. Then, when the Rio Grande emerges from White Rock Canyon, its character changes dramatically as it flattens out.

The mountain rivers of the U.S. West share this same fundamental characteristic. They drop rapidly in elevation, furiously carrying snowmelt and rain, and for millennia they have flooded annually, once or more. Each time they do, they spread out across the landscape and tear out the components of the existing ecosystem in and along the river, moving gravel, silt, rocks and logs and using that material to build a new river and riparian ecosystem.

Plant and animal species that live in and along the river have adapted to the ecological conditions of this flood pulse and thrive because of it. Cottonwood trees send out clouds of white puffs that are seeds, which fall on to the flood-moistened soil, allowing them to germinate and send down their first roots.

The endangered silvery minnow is designed to occupy the warm water in low-flow channels and to reproduce when there is a pulse of water in the spring. The river also provides critical habitat for more than 400 bird species and is vital as a resting and feeding station for migratory birds, including the spectacular sandhill crane migration.

The monster flood of 1941 carried a massive amount of sediment, spreading along some 200 miles of river and creating a foundation for the bosque of the middle Rio Grande, the portion in New Mexico. It is the largest cottonwood bosque forest in the U.S.

Humans have reacted to the flood pulse by blocking most of it. In the 1960s, officials began a project to prevent further damaging floods along the Rio Grande. They built the massive Cochiti Dam as a form of flood and sediment control. It is one of the largest earth-filled dams in the world, three quarters of a mile across, a black wall towering above everything else. It has achieved its engineering aim, stopping floodwaters and sediment from flowing downstream. But it has also destroyed the flood pulse ecology of the river and is causing the slow death of the bosque.

Meanwhile invasive Russian olive and tamarisk trees have moved in beneath the canopy, all fire-prone species. Fires in the bosque were once virtually non-existent; now they routinely break out. In 2017, the Tiffany fire in southern New Mexico roared across the parched landscape, leaving more than 9,000 acres of riparian cottonwood forest a charred ruin.

Because of levees built to contain its flow, the Rio Grande now courses mostly through a narrow channel, rather than expanding broadly across the landscape, which disconnects the main stem from its many side channels. That has eliminated much of the meandering sloughs, braids, and oxbows, which are habitat for the silvery minnow, once present throughout the entire river but now found only in 10 percent of its range.

Thomas Archdeacon is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fish biologist in Albuquerque charged with helping preserve the dwindling silvery minnow during a megadrought. He and his colleagues placed window screens to capture silvery minnow eggs as they flowed downstream. They planned to take the eggs to a federal fish hatchery, where the fish are bred. But there were no eggs on the morning we visited.

Come July, Archdeacon and others will rush out to the dwindling river and catch fish stranded in pools and take them below a nearby dam, where they can survive in deeper, cooler water for a while longer.

The increasing frequency and size of forest fires is also taking a toll on the Rio Grande. As we drove along the river near Santa Fe in early May, we could see giant clouds of smoke pouring out of the raging forest fires.

For more than 30 years, Rio Grande Stables has been providing quality, dependability, and expertise to our clients. Whether you are a family of first-time riders to an accomplished equestrian looking for that special experience, we have the guides and trails to make this a special memory! Join us and learn the difference between the expected on the exceptional.

We had the pleasure of having Kelly as our wrangler and she was super friendly and was fantastic with our daughter who was there for her first ride. We couldn't of had a better experience! We were in from Texas for a wedding and she informed us of your stables in the Big Bend area and we will for sure be going down in the fall!

Peyton took my wife and I on the most stunning sunset ride. We both had not ridden since we were kids but she made sure we were safe and moving at a comfortable pace. 2hr ride with a short break for views and pictures! Highly recommended and a good deal.

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