Hawaii: Kona/Hilo Day 2

Today was a big adventure day. We drove from Kona to Hilo. On our way we stopped and has breakfast at Liliku Café. I had a crepe with cottage cheese, strawberries, bananas, and yogurt. A little strange, but tasty.

After, we continued up the coast. Our first stop was at Akaka Waterfalls. It has a great flow and beautiful greenery around it. There was a rainbow in the mist coming off of the falls. We then took the Four Mile Drive, which is a small road that wove around the coastline. A lot of the time it was covered by trees, but when you could see the coast it was breathtaking. Then we stopped in Hilo for ice cream before heading to the boiling pots. The lookout wasn’t very good, so we climbed down a makeshift path onto them. There hadn’t been much rain the night before, so they were gurgling rather than boiling. We also stopped at Rainbow Falls, which was smaller than the Akaka Falls.

From there, we stopped at a burger joint called Cronics for lunch. At 3:30, out tour guide, Ben, picked us up for our sunset lava tour. He was a very funny driver and had some great stories for us. He was actually from Hilo, so he knew and loved the area. We went through a lot of winding forests to Aunties Macadamia Nut Farm. She moved to Hilo 20 years ago and bought this farm 12 years ago. Macadamia nuts can be harvested all year round, though she chooses to harvest only about 4 months. Her farm lead all the way down to the ocean.  

Our next stop was the black sand beaches. Most of it is gone because of a past lava flow that added 1/4th of a mile to the island in 1983. The only way to find it, without aimlessly wandering is to follow a red rock path through the lava field. The surf was high when we were there, and Ben told us that it had a notoriously strong undertow.

A little after 6, we headed to the active lava spot. Because it's been popping up at random and trying to flow over a lot of the roads, they had people parking father away, but Ben had us move a traffic cone so we could park up front. The viewing wasn't great, but we could see some flow. We did see a tree go up in flames. I think if we could have been 500 yards closer, we would have had a great view. One of the problems with the unpredictability of lava. Ben cooked us chicken for dinner at Auntie's.  We got back to our hotel around 10:30.

Hawaii: O'ahu Day 3 - Honolulu

July 30 Continued.

After leaving Pearl Harbor, Kioa took us to the Hawaii National Cemetery (featured in Saving Private Ryan).  We didn’t stop and get out, but drove through and heard a few stories. One that stuck with me in particular was about one row of graves that were brothers the entire way down. There was also a story about two friends who wished to be buried on either side of an unknown soldier so that he too would always have a friend by his side.

We also went through downtown Honolulu and saw the Capital, Library, Legislature, former post office, and the only Royal Palace in the United States. The Capital building was interesting because of the symbolization in the architecture. The building is surrounded by a reflecting pool, which symbolized the Pacific Ocean. The columns around the outside are built to resemble royal palm trees. There are eight on either side of the building, representing the either main Hawaiian Islands. It’s built with an open-air design and the center, usually a rotunda, is left open to the sky. Bonus points if anyone can guess the 90’s anime cartoon Drew and I kept referencing upon seeing the King’s statue.

Back at the hotel, we hung out by the pool for a couple of hours. We had dinner at Cheeseburger Island. They had pretty good burgers, but not much for seafood. I think this was the only night I didn’t eat fish.