Day 2: Tuesday 4.24.2018
The 6 hour time change was hard! At 1:40AM Hawaii’s time 6:40AM Texas time, I was awake - primarily with the phone vibrating but fought urge and went back to sleep until 4:40AM.
We got up before sunrise and drove to the famous black sand beach called Punalu"u Beach. It was simply amazing.
On the way back, we explored a small town of Pahala, stopping at a 6:45AM at a local grocery store to get some breakfast. We will always remember passing the termite fumigation tents and stopping on the side of the road to check out the massive coffee plantations.
Around 8AM, we got back to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park did one of the most incredible things of the day - a 4 mile Kīlauea Iki Hike - Wow, what an experience! It was so wet and a 400 foot steep decline before traveling over a mile along the base of the lava lake that suddenly erupted in 1959. We hiked 400 feet back up and we had an incredible morning 4 mile hike.
Before leaving the famous Volcano House, we enjoyed some more views of the crater from the porch of our hotel.
We packed up showered and headed to Hilo for an delicious Poke bowl and Poke Ahi nachos at Island Cafe, for lunch. We couldn't get enough of raw Poke while we were there. We did some shopping along Kamehameha Avenue facing Hilo Bay.
Close by Hilo, we experienced the powerful Rainbow Falls and the massive trees, nearby. Then we continued traveling north, along the entire East part of the coast line.
We did the Pepeekeo Scenic Drive, a drive filled with one lane bridges and a raging river that travels till you park on the side of the road and go down the Onema Trail to find a secluded gray rock beach. Everything was so green, the most remarkable variety of ferns and plants in the most giagantic forms. Many of the palm leaves were 6 feet across. It makes me wonder how many varieties are there on this island?
Just about 10 minutes farther north up the coast was Akaka Falls. It started raining again but it was again stunning and green.
Around 5PM we were 90 minutes away from the Hilton, where we were stopping to stay for the night, and were tired but we decided to power through and hit one last top rated view point on the very north east corner of the entire island. The road completely dead ends and it overlooks the Waipi’o Coast and Valley. This is a very famous part of the island and once a large Tsunami hit nearby wiping out a small village.
Over the last 29 hours since we landed in Kailua-Kona on the far West side of the Big Island, we fully explore he entire East coast of the Hawaii Big Island. The only 2 things that I’m sad to have missed is the lava flowing and being able to do the hike we had wanted to do the first evening and going to the farthest South part of the Island to see the Green Sand Beach. At 5AM this morning - we were less than an hour from it but we had to decide between it or the Volcano Crater Hike. If time was unlimited, I would have stayed 2 nights at Volcano house to have time for Green Sand Beach and to do a little more at Volcano National Park.
I can see clearly now the rain is gone came on the radio right when the sun started shining around 6:20PM. We had just officially gotten to the northwest corner of the Big Island, where we were told it would be much sunnier and dryer.
That early evening, we checked into Hilton and enjoyed good old hamburger as we dinned next to the hotel's dolphins that were jumping beside us in the dolphin pools and watched the last 60 seconds of the Sours game as their playoff dreams officially ended for 2018. It had been a big day!
No comments:
Post a Comment