Day Five

Today we slept in late. Jeff and I were pretty tired from driving all day yesterday. When we got up we drove down into Kona for a last hurrah at the KBC - good beer and pizza again!
We walked around Kona and picked up some fun things for people at home and split another Hawaiian shave ice.

E: "My opinion on shave ice has totally changed! I'm surprised we haven't gotten this every day."
J: "You can almost describe it as a spiritual revelation in which you realize the natural superiority of shave ice."
E: "I'll never touch a snow cone again."
J: "Snow cones are the product of a hack."




After our glorious shave ice we drove to the harbor to try to see some fish... this marlin head greeted us in the water.
We saw a boat that caught a wahoo, a few skipjack tunas and a short bill spearfish - something Jeff hasn't seen before. Other than that, it was pretty dead. We drove home.



Jack and Deb took us all to a ridiculously good restaurant, the Tommy Bahama cafe. Jeff and I split a shrimp & scallop curry with almond rice and a salad that was to die for. Mmmm...
Our sunset was really beautiful too.




After dinner we explored a few of the resorts nearby. We walked through the Mauna Loa Resort, the The Fairfield Orchid and the Four Seasons. They were ridiculous. Too bad I don't have pictures. You should google them to see the ridiculousness....
We had desert at the Lava Lounge in the Four Seasons and I had this crazy island dessert trio; lychee mousse with rose whipped cream, dragon fruit and kiwi, Hawaiian sweet bread with coconut sorbet, and a mango tart. Pretty good!!

Drove home and now I'm going to bed.

I fly home tomorrow *sigh*. Back to the grind soon.
We'll have one more fling tomorrow and I leave at 8:00pm. So, I probably won't post the last day of our trip until Saturday or Sunday since I work as soon as I get back. Grr.

P.S. Jeff wore a BROWN shirt today.

Day Four

Loooong day yesterday. We all got up at 6:00am to commence our full drive around the big island. We drove a crazy road that seemed like it should have been in Europe somewhere - with it's narrowness and millions of bumps and potholes.
After two hours we arrived in Hilo, the tropical, wet side of the island, and went to the Hilo Farmer's Market. Lots of interesting fruits and veggies. We shopped there for a bit, and had lunch.
Here is the market:



Jeff and I ate octopus takiyobi, chicken pad thai, spam musabi, takiyaki, lychee fruits and a thai iced tea for lunch and ate by this huge tree that was awesome. Food was really really good. Thanks to our friends Fred & Erica for introducing us to the spam musabi at home... otherwise we probably wouldn't have dared try it - and it wasn't to be missed!! So good.



We drove a bit further north of Hilo to visit a bunch of waterfalls, hike in the jungley part of the island, and swim in this cool fresh water river that had a rope swing. Unfortunately leptospirosis prevented us from swimming, and construction on the paths we were going to hike prevented us from the hike we were going to try. Oh well...

This is the area with the rope swing:


These are some of the forested areas we saw, and some waterfalls:

Jeff loved this tree:

After walking around in the blazing heat we stopped at a stand on the side of the road to sip some fresh coconut water and eat the coconut, something I've never done. It wasn't particularly good, but it was still fun to experience.

After Hilo, we drove south to the active volcano. Unfortunately, when we arrived it was pouring rain - Hawaii style. Jeff and I weren't to be thwarted again, and wrapped up in our beach towels to run and look at everything.

This is us at the steam vents. It was really nice and warm next to them.

Here is the volcano crater. That plume of smoke is hard to see, but is an active eruption. We drove back up after exploring the rest of the park just in time for the sun to go down. At night that plume of smoke is lit orange because it comes from a 200 foot shaft with flowing lava at the bottom of it. It was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

This is a lava tube we walked through:

These are older eruptions that are everywhere, and are just amazing. Jeff and I laughed that bigfoot must have walked in the lava field before it cooled to much.... What else could have made this impression?!

Oh, Jeff says: "Don't trivialize something I believe!"...

There was a short hike from one part of the park to an ancient petroglyph site. It was weird. You can read the sign and see what I mean.

This is the end of the road... literally. An eruption in the 80s flowed right across this part of the road, making the next seven miles completely impassable. And, sadly, the current eruption is in an area you have to hike that far in to see. We weren't planning on doing a 14 mile hike at 6:00pm, so we passed on seeing the lava flow into the ocean. And, hiking on this stuff isn't easy either. I'm not to disappointed. :)

This sign was funny. And, this was as close as we could get to seeing actual lava. That cloud on the horizon is where it dumps into the ocean.

This was our sunset on our way back up to the crater. Isn't it beautiful!?

We stopped on our way home at a black sand beach Debbie was eager to see. Even though it was night, it was still pretty cool. By extending my shutter speed I got this picture of the moon reflecting on the ocean. I think it's pretty cool.

And that was it, folks. We drove the 3 hours home and crashed at midnight. It was a lot to see in one day, but it was worth it to be able to see all of Hawaii.

Day three funness...

Is that even a word?
Anyway. We had a really mellow day today and stayed close to the condo. Jeff and I got up early and walked back down to the Hilton to attempt swimming with the sea turtles. That part was awesome, but it was SO hard to see in the water because the freshwater waterfall mixing with the salt water lagoon and the temperature variability made it like swimming through mixing water and oil. The water was shimmering, and I felt like I was going blind! Needless to say, we weren't out long. We spent the rest of our afternoon in the fresh water pools, going down water slides and reading in a two-person hammock together. It was so nice. They also have a dolphin pool (like sea world) that we watched for a while.
Here are the pictures:

We walked back and finished our books, took a nap and just relaxed.
All of us made dinner together and ate on the porch. We had coconut rice, macadamia nut crusted mahi mahi, grilled ahi tuna, garlic broccoli and pineapple for dinner. It was so good I ate myself sick.

Here's pics of our sunset and all of us cooking:

After dinner we played two rounds of pass the pigs, which Jack & Deb had never played before. It was hilarious. That picture of me is totally real! I actually threw a double snouter - my first ever! Yahoo!

Is this picture real?!