So we woke up kinda early today and headed out in our swim-gear to head to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling. Unfortunately, when we got there, the parking lot was completely full, to the point that they had two guys turning cars away.

So much for that.

Instead, we decided to hike a nearby trail that leads to a lighthouse called the Kaiwi Shoreline Trail.

Kaiwi Shoreline Trail

Which apparently is really, really dangerous:

Nature kills.

We started going up the trail, which was fairly steep since it more or less went up a mountain. Of course, at this point, we’re still in our beach gear.

Continued…

We get up kinda late today and pack up to explore the rest of Oahu. The plan today is to visit the northern beaches of Oahu, as can be seen in this map in blue:

Day 8 Route

Before that, we visited a place called Diamond Head Market that sells a bunch of tasty stuff and got some of their famous lemon crunch cake (for breakfast!):

Lemon Crunch Cake… for breakfast!?

We started to drive north and on the way, we stopped by the Dole Plantation:

Dole Plantation

Continued…

So we got up on this fine Christmas Day and headed down to the hotel lobby for their free breakfast by the pool. We found out quickly that there were a whole lot of people in line around 8:30am or so. Literally everybody and their kid was there.

Everybody needs breakfast, I guess.

Luckily, while standing in line, you could hear the dulcet tones of a dude singing Christmas songs with a Hawaiian twist with Hulu dancer accompaniment.

While eating, there were a whole bunch of birds that seemed to be keenly interesting in the crumbs we were leaving behind. Funny enough, I finally got a clear shot of one of the honeycreeper birds that I’ve been trying to take a picture of this whole trip:

Honeycreeper creeping on my breakfast

Continued…

Today marks the end of our stay on Hawai’i, the Big Island in the Hawaii chain of islands.

But before that, we decided to fit in as much sight-seeing as we could before our flight in the afternoon.

After visiting a local drive-thru coffee place and a bakery place (that had monkey bread), we headed from Hilo to nearby Pahoa to visit their Lava Tree Park. You can get an idea of where Pahoa is in this map, where our route today is in red:

Day 6 Route (red)

At this point, we’ve pretty much gone around the entire Big Island. As the person who did most of the driving, I’ve got to say that it’s been really interesting circumnavigating the island, you get to see a lot of different kinds of scenery, everything from the Jurassic Park-style rain forests that seem to be the default, to the dry, grassy plains in the rain shadow of the volcanoes, to the really tall trees near the northern part that remind me of driving through California, and driving along the coast, which is as tropical and picturesque as one would expect from Hawaii.

We got to Lava Tree Park, and the first thing is that all the trees are huge.

Lava Tree Park

Continued…

We got up bright and early this morning to challenge the Waimanu Valley trail right next to the house we were staying at:

Waimanu Valley

The trail was… a challenge. Despite being only about a mile in distance, it’s apparently 25″ grade on average, which is ridiculously steep. We started about 2000ft feet up and got down to sea level in about a mile. Also, the “trail” isn’t as much a “trail” as an un-maintained one-lane road that is uneven and rocky. Since it’s a road, 4wd vehicles can actually go down it. And, since it had rained recently, the entire way was slippery as well.

Going down Waimanu Valley road

The way down was extremely slow-going, as slipping and falling was really easy at certain parts. Though, one nice thing about the slow pace was that you could take your time to enjoy looking out into the valley and ocean:

Waimanu Valley

Continued…

Waking up to a symphony of nature (and by that, I mean hella birds chirping right outside the window), we got up and prepared breakfast using the handy-dandy kitchen that the house has.

The plan today is to go around the northern part of the Big Island, as seen in purple on this map:

Day 4 Route

We headed back the way we came to visit Pu’ukohola Heiau historic site, which is a sacred site to King Kamehamaha the 1st, who bestowed Goku his signature attack.

Pu’ukohola Heiau

You can see in the map here that there’s apparently a whole bunch of history here with a preserved temple (the “heiau” in pu’ukohola heiau), old city grounds, and apparently the site for an important event in Hawaii’s history.

Map of the historic site

Continued…

So we woke up early, ate banana bread with macadamia nuts and drank overpriced coffee from a coffee shop in the hotel. Then, we all piled into the car again and headed to different destinations along the western coast of Hawai’i island.

One site has the quite potent name of Pu’uhonua O Honaunau, which is apparently a sacred site to the Hawaiian natives.

Pu’uhonua O Honaunau

Sharp-eyed readers might note the “High Surf” sign on the right. Apparently, the surf is ridiculous today, with half the park actually being closed, largely due to being underwater. There’s a high wall you can kinda see on the left here:

Inside Pu’uhonua O Honaunua

Continued…

We got up today and have a similarly simple breakfast to yesterday while throwing our stuff into the car to prepare going to our next destination. Before that though, we headed to a certain trail which is apparently very highly recommended:

Kilauea Iki Trail

It’s a 4ish mi. trail that goes around, down, and then across a crater of a volcano that erupted around 1959 and (I think) is now extinct.

The trail starts off with some very Jurassic Park-like fauna, which isn’t that surprising since Jurassic Park was apparently filmed in Hawaii.

Watch your back, velociraptors could be anywhere

Continued…

At some point, my parents realized that they had never gone to Hawaii. Also, they realized that their copious amount of accumulated frequent flier miles would get them there. They asked my sister and I if we wanted to go. We did. And here we are!

Right after landing in Honolulu, we immediately headed to another plane to head to The Big Island of Hawaii, otherwise known as Hawai’i. An interesting thing about the airports in both Honolulu and Hilo (the airport in the Big Island) was that both of the airports were open-air, with lots of the walkways being completely open. Tells you something about how the weather is in Hawaii when they don’t even feel the need to build full walls.

We got into Hilo Airport fairly late, rented a car, threw our stuff in and proceeded to drive across the island to Volcanoes National Park. You can get a sense of the drive here via the blue line:

Day 0 Route

As the name implies, Volcanoes National Park is more or less right next to a few large volcanoes and craters, including Mauna Loa, which is apparently the largest active volcano in the world. Here’s an example of one of the large craters you can see in the park (Halema’uma’u Crater)

Continued…