After our sunny, westside beach adventures, we were off to Hilo to explore the east side of the island!
It was about a 1.5 hours drive from our place in Mauna Lani to the Hilo farmer's market, which is right in "downtown" Hilo across the street from the waterfront. It was a small market but we were able to get some fresh fruit and then grabbed take out a few local places for lunch before jumping back in the car again. Next up was exploring some local waterfalls and we ended up exploring 3 in all - Akaka Falls, Rainbow Falls and Boiling Pots. All 3 are all very close to get to from their respective parking lots. Akaka falls had the longest walk, and that was only about half a mile on a paved path! It was nice though that this side of the island was incredibly lush and green so our walks were through dense, beautiful rainforests. The bummer was that it was pretty wet and rainy, but it was nothing us Seattle-ites couldn't handle!
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| We got there about 11am and it was still there... |
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| Kathy negotiating prices on Soursop |
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| The walk to Akaka Falls |
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| There it is! |
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| Akaka Falls is 442ft tall. |
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| Rainbow Falls is small but picturesque. |
After that, it was time to head to our next airbnb, which was in Pahoa, a small town about 30 minutes south of Hilo. We were sold on the description we read about this place that said it was situated on 20 acres with lots of exotic fruit trees and boy, we were not disappointed! The house was amazing! We couldn't stop taking pictures of the beautiful grounds - it was almost like being in your own botanical garden. It had just about every type of fruit tree you can think of, although most of them were not in season so we couldn't pick them. We did, however, get some apple bananas off the banana palms and helped ourselves to boy choy and hawaiian chilis from their vegetable garden to help round out our meals there.
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Coffee out on the patio
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| Score! Kathy was able to get down the bananas from the palm tree! |
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| HUGE pot and HUGE palm leaves. |
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| So picturesque! |
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| Beautiful flowers everywhere. Look at the size of these things! |
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| Hanging out in the hot tub. |
The next morning, we got up bright and early to drive the 40 minutes or so to Volcano National Park. I've been dying to go since we didn't make it here last time we were on the island. Unfortunately, all of the recent volcano activity has died down; the lava lake and lava flows that were red hot and bubbling have cooled down to a gray nothing. Even though we didn't see any red hot lava, it was still pretty neat to see the big (gray) lava lake and all the steam vents. We also explored the Thurston Lava Tubes! Lava tubes are basically tunnels made from lava flow when the top layer of lava cools enough that it crusts over, and then the lava below it eventually stops flowing and empties out to clear out a tunnel. The Thurston Lava Tubes were a short little hike (about 2 miles for us to get there because we took the long route) and then the tube itself was 600 ft long and actually lit up with small lights so wasn't at all as scary as I thought it would be. Apparently, there are lava tubes all over the island and many of them are so big and vast that you can get lost in them!
We also drove the length of the park all the way down to the ocean to see where the lava meets the water. Truthfully, I thought this would be much cooler to see because there is a sea arch that was made by the cooling lava, but the scenery, while very pretty, was pretty much like the rest of the island: black lava rocks against the blue sea.
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| Ready to go! |
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| Steam vents are kinda like a hot sauna? |
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| Lava lake! |
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| Entrance to the lava tube. Can you imagine being the person who discovered this in 1913 and venturing in? |
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| Inside the Thurston lava tube. |
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| Interesting lava patterns |
On our last day for this part of our trip, we took our time exploring the local area by going to the nearby farmer's market and then checking out Kaimu beach. Kaimu beach is yes, yet another black sand beach but I had this one on my radar because a) the geothermal pools we originally wanted to go to were determined a no-go because many of us had cuts and scrapes on our bodies from boogie boarding and walking on rocks so we had to find something else to do and b) the original Kaimu beach was buried in 50 feet of lava back in 1990, so the new Kaimu beach is really quite young! I didn't realize HOW young until we got there and found out that well, it's not really a beach beach... it's more like black shoreline where the pounding waves are trying its hardest to break down the lava rock into sand. I can imagine in 100 years that Kaimu beach will really be a black sand beach but until then, it is just a very picturesque, fun place to watch waves from a safe distance.
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| The kids all go matching honu (turtle) bracelets. |
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| Catching some sea spray at Kaimu beach. |
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| The black sand at Kaimu beach. |
Next installment is the last part of our trip: Exploring the Kona area!
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