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!