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.
2 comments:
You guys are troopers. There's no way I would have done all that. After one day of sightseeing I'm usually done for the remainder of a trip. But then I am the most boring person I know.
My first trip in Hawaii would have been lame if we hadn't seen stuff. I'm not usually a beach, do nothing girl. I like museums and interesting things, but there isn't anything like that here. So, we drove around.
The volcano was cool.
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