Hawaii - Day 11, Big Island

For our last day on the Big Island we drove over to the other side of the island to visit Akaka Falls. It was amazing how the scenery changes as you go across the island, from really dry landscape covered in lava to really green surroundings just like Kauai.

After visiting the falls we drove to the Waipio Valley. There is a beautiful lookout where you can see down to a beach and there is a road that you can walk all the way down into the valley but it is really, really steep - a 25% incline.

We started walking down it and Chris was trying to convince me that there were probably minibuses at the bottom to take people back up the hill. After walking about half way down I decided that I didn't want to take the risk of having to walk all the way back up so I let Chris carry on to the bottom and I walked back up. Even just walking half of it was exhausting. When I finally got back to the top I found myself a nice place to just sit and read my book until Chris came back up. It turned out that there were no minibuses at the bottom and Chris had to walk all the way back up, I was so relieved that I didn't go all the way to the bottom.  It would have taken me all day to walk back up.

We stopped off at the Pololu Valley lookout next...

As it was New Years Eve so we decided to start heading back to the hotel and we'd planned to go to a steak and seafood buffet that was being held in the hotel restaurant that evening. We hadn't had any lunch and Chris decided he was starving so about an hour from the hotel we stopped so Chris could have some food. I wasn't that hungry but ate a bit of a quesadilla while Chris ate a teriyaki and pineapple burger that he said was the best burger he'd ever eaten.

We continued our drive back to the hotel but after about 30 minutes Chris appeared to be suffering from a bout of food poisoning. I won't go into too much detail but let's just say the Big Island suddenly felt very big and finally making it to the nearest facilities at the airport was a huge relief for Chris.  We finally made it back to the hotel later that afternoon and needless to say that we didn't go out for dinner that night, Chris saw in 2012 from the hotel bathroom while I was fast asleep!

Hawaii - Day 10, Big Island

We got up really early on Friday morning so that we could drive across the island to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Visiting the park was the reason that we decided to come to the Big Island so we were both really excited about the day.

It took about 2 hours to drive there so we arrived at about 8am.  We stopped off in the visitor center first to pick up some maps and guides then went to look at the steam vents where hot steam is just coming out of holes in the ground.

Next we drove around Crater Rim Drive to the Thurston Lava Tube.

After walking through the lava tube we picked up the Kilauea Iki trail.  The trail follows the crater edge looking down on to a lava lake.  We didn't realise that the trail actually goes down the edge of the crater and through the lake. It was really difficult but fun trying to follow the trail across the rocks. Lava rock is full of little holes and its really light, it was strange to pick up some huge rocks that you'd expect to be really heavy but they were light.

As you can see we were quite excited about walking across the lava lake!

It took us about 2 hours to walk the trail and it got really hot, especially while walking over the black lava. We decided to do a short, easy trail next called the Devastation trail. Chris decided it would be funny to pose for photos with the steaming volcano!

Quite a large area of the national park is closed at the moment because the levels of sulphur dioxide gas are too high. We drove down the Chain of Craters Road towards the sea and we kept seeing signs telling you to shut the windows if you could smell sulphur.

I thought the lava looked a bit like chocolate brownies.  The smooth lava looked like the top of brownies, then the darker lava looked like crumbs.  The two different types are caused by the different temperatures.

The last part of the park that we visited was the sulphur banks, it was really smelly!

Later in the afternoon we drove another hour towards the coast.  We got a pizza from a food van on the beach then had a couple of hours to hang about until a boat trip that we had booked for the evening.

We had seen lava boat trips advertised but they were really expensive so we hadn't planned to book one.  After our boat trip in Kauai was cancelled we started to think that maybe we should try to book one.  We only booked the day before so the only trip we could get was a night time one at 7.30pm.  I had really wanted to go on a sunset one and wasn't convinced that going at night was going to be any good.  

We had to meet in a really random car park in the middle of nowhere and even though we were about 2 hours early, we didn't have to worry that we were in the wrong place because quite a few other cars pulled up not long after us and looked like they were all there for the same thing.  The boat turned up on the back of a trailer just before we were due to go and the people that had been on the sunset trip all got off.  They all said that it had been good and that they had been able to see lava glowing along the coast.  

The captain called us all over and said that even though the previous group had seen some lava it was very faintly glowing and looked like it was fading so there was a good chance that we wouldn't see anything.  He said that if anyone wanted to cancel they could have their money back or if we wanted to go he'd give us a $20 discount each (that wasn't much considering it was so expensive!).  A few people decided to cancel but we thought as we'd waited around so long that we might as well go. 

It was really exciting going out into the sea in the pitch black night, the boat was really fast so we decided that even if we didn't see lava we were enjoying the boat ride and we saw loads of bioluminescence which are like fire flies.

It took us about 30 minutes to get to the area where the lava was and as we approached it the Captain came over the tannoy to say that he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  In the hour that he had been away the lava had started flowing from the land into the sea.  It hadn't done that since March!  It was the most amazing thing that I have ever seen, red lava pouring off the cliff and hitting the sea.  Apparently the sea was also the calmest that it had been all year so we were able to get really close to the lava.  You could really feel the heat coming off it.  

We spent about 30 minutes just watching the lava then just as the Captain announced that were were going to head back, the boat turned and I was just looking at the coastline when suddenly there was a big red glow and bits of lava flew into the air and a huge rock fell off the cliff face, it dropped a couple of metres then caught on something and stopped before it fell into the sea.  It was such an amazing sight, the whole area was glowing red.  The Captain said we were really lucky to see that, he'd been doing these tours for years and had never seen a rock do that.  

Chris and I were so glad that we had done the trip.  We got back to the car at about 9.30pm then had a 3 hour drive to get back to the hotel but we were both still so excited, we couldn't stop talking about it.

Our photos and video aren't great because it was really difficult to take photos and film at night while the boat was bobbing up and down!

Hawaii - Day 9, Big Island

On our first full day in Big Island we decided to have a beach day at Kekaha Kai State Park.  We got there fairly early but the beach was already quite busy. Chris loves snorkeling so spent most of the time in the sea.

After a few hours on the beach we went back to Kailua-Kona and visited the Kona Brewing Company. They make longboard lager which Chris likes.

In the evening we went to a luau in the grounds of our hotel. We're not usually interested in going to shows while on holiday but we were interested in trying some of the traditional Hawaiian feast so thought we'd go and we could always leave if it was terrible. It was actually good and we stayed the whole night trying to drink as many as the free watered down Mai Tais as possible!

Hawaii - Day 8, Big Island

After our five days in Kauai we moved on to the Big Island.  We had to fly back to Honolulu then on to Kona, Big Island.  The flights are only about 30 minutes but by the time we'd checked in then transferred and picked up our bags again we didn't arrive until lunch time.  We picked up our hire car and drove straight to our hotel in Kailua-Kona.  It was amazing how different the scenery was compared to Kauai.  On either side of the road for most of the 15 minute drive to our hotel was dried lava.

We checked into our hotel then went out for lunch and a walk around the town.

Later in the afternoon we drove to Pu'uhonua o Honaunau which is a national park service historical park.

There was a small beach at the park which was roped off for turtles to nest, we could see some of the tracks they had left on the beach.

We spent ages looking into the water hoping to see a turtle and finally Chris managed to spot one. He just looks like a rock in the picture below because I didn't have my zoom lens with me.  I think he was teasing us because everytime I put my camera down he would stick his head up out of the water!