Big Island........Hawaii

   The second time I went to Hawaii I flew with my companion from Vancouver to Seattle and then boarded an air Canada flight to Honolulu; the view overlooking Seattle was very nice. Once we landed in Honolulu we bought a reduced return ticket for Hilo on the Big Island which stopped on Molokai and Maui; these stops were great for us because we got such excellent views from the window of the airplane.

                        

    It was dark by the time we got our luggage so we ended up walking with our heavy packs until we found a $45 a night room on a busy road, our idea originally was to stay in hostels. In the morning we took a 3 hr bus ride the 160 kms over to the Kona Coast on the west side of the island; the scenery was very nice.  We found a hostel which had campsites for $14 per night; our intention was to back-pack around and camp, but there were very few places on the island to camp. We found a place where we could rent a car for a few days; the beach was about 10 kms from the hostel; so we started to walk the supposed 4 kms to get the little Chevette. We had a near miss while walking when a woman was looking at us while the car in front of her was stopped waiting to turn; she slammed on her brakes and cut the wheels, eventually hitting the guardrail about 3 metres in front of us. After that near miss we asked a guy where the car rental place was and it turned out to be another 8 kms up the road, he give us a ride. I could not believe how many small children walk on the side of the busy highway.

  There were stories from people hanging around the hostel of robberies, beatings, and vandalism by Hawaii'n locals; we did notice that park entrances had many guys standing around drinking so we were careful. We drove down to Ka Lae (South Point) which is the most southern point in the US territory, it was nice down there. We then proceeded to Volcanoes National Park just to get familiar with that area before we headed to Black Sand Beach, Kailua, Kona.

                                       

This beach was extraordinary and a must see; since most all of the "Big Island" is lava (basalt), you can find this black sand. There were plenty of mongoose spotted on this day.

                           


  The next day we drove 40 kms to Hapuna Beach and it was beautiful there; the temperature was a bit high but I guess sitting on a beach in Hawaii one would expect for the temperature to be hot. There was some good snorkeling with many types of fish to be viewed; the waves got a little too big later on. The next few days we mixed the beaches up a bit and found some great places to hang out and snorkel. We took the rental car back and hitch-hiked to the beach the next couple of days.

  I was snorkeling around swarms of different fish when I got stung, I got out immediately. The stinging lasted about 30 minutes and then I started to feel dozy and my eyes became a little blurry. When I walked up the sand towards the road I got chest pains for about 10 minutes but that ended. I felt dozy for another hour and then the condition seemed to improve, thank goodness. Another day we walked and hitched to Honaunau Bay (City of Refuge) and the Napoopoo Beach on Kealakekua Bay; so much good snorkeling from these nice beaches.

                                      

 There are less people at Hapuna so we ended up going there several more days; the fish swim away from you rather than swarm you like at Napoopoo Beach.

  We rented another car and had an amazing day at the Halemaumau Crater in Volcanoes National Park. We drove around the crater rim road and walked a bit until the sulfur dioxide from the crater was too strong to handle. The sunsets are not as good as they could be

                         


because of the ash in the air; the volcano has been active for several years, every day spewing ash and lava. The crater was a great experience and walking around up there give us a different perspective of the Big Island.

                                          

     Without a car again we used our thumbs to get back and fourth to the beaches. Down at Napoopoo Beach I snorkeled around the coast further than usual and was rewarded with sights of larger fish, eel's and turtles, just an awesome experience. The next day we got picked up by an experienced guy who filled us with a lot of local information, AND the typical warnings about the locals, we heard that a lot.

  Next day we were in search of falls to view so we headed towards Waimea. The scenery was nice but we did make the foolish mistake of getting into the back of a truck where the young driver was reckless. After getting out alive we walked about 2 kms until we were picked up by Karen who was an incredibly kind lady.

She drove us to Akaka Falls which was very nice, we walked around there while she meditated.

                                                  

There were other nice falls like this Rainbow Falls

                           

  Karen offered her little cottage for us to stay in for the night and the next day she asked us if we would stay one more day so she could show us around on a tour.

We saw about 4 more waterfalls as well as some caves before taking Saddle Road which runs along the base of Mauna Kea, that trip was nice.

                                            

 We passed through some of the Parker Ranch which is the USA's largest single family owned ranch


                          

   We took a look at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, as much as we could see without being one of the patron's, it was so extravagant. Our 2 days with Karen were magnificent, she was an awesome lady. In the end the Big Island ended up to be a positive experience, there was so much nice scenery...one can only imagine being there when the volcano is dormant.