Hawai’i: Active Volcanoes, Manta Rays, Rain Forests… and a Wedding
Everything about Hawai’i was surprising. When we were invited to a wedding there, we did not expect to experience active volcanoes, snorkel with Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles, dive with Giant Manta Rays, marvel at the lushness of dripping rain forests and share a traditional Hawaiian wedding on a beach, at sunset. Add to that, green sand beaches, black sand beaches, coffee plantations, huge waterfalls, lava tubes, 2-tank morning dives, an incredible botanical gardens, you will get a glimmer of our week-long visit to Hawai’i’s Big Island in February. And those were just a few of the highlights.
Best of all, we got to share all these experiences with our sons’ families; the first time the ten of us have taken a vacation together.
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Hawai’i is known as an expensive destination, so when we received the wedding invitation we agreed with our boys’ families to link our travel plans and stay together in an Airbnb to save money. We settled on splitting our week-long stay between Kailua Kona (the wedding location), on the west side of the island, and Hilo, one the east coast.
Hilo is known to be on the wet side of the island (averaging 143 inches of rain a year) and this February was no exception. The rain did not deter us, and in many ways it enhanced our experiences there. On our visit to the Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Garden, for example, the rain only emphasized the gorgeous colors of the rain forest flora. The streams and waterfalls were bloated from the downpours, making them explosive.
There were also plenty of sun breaks, especially in Kona, so we were able to follow through with most of our previously planned activities.
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Lava, Lava Everywhere
Our first stop after we landed in Kona was to a nearby beach. After hours sitting on the plane this gave Emmett and Luca (Wyatt and Sara’s boys) a chance to unwind a little and get a taste for adventures that lay ahead. For us, it was an introduction to lava, a substance so foreign to our sheltered New England existence.
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Our first adventure on Hawai’i was driving to the opposite side of the island, where we planned to spend our first three days. To get there we had to drive the Saddle Road which bisects the island and its active volcanoes. Imagine driving through a desert, mountains in the distance (volcanic steam rising on both sides), except the desert floor is not sand, but blackened lava. The rain was blowing sideways, so we did not stop for photos, but it was an eerie introduction to this “island paradise”. It looked more like Dante’s Inferno. It looked a lot like the floor of a volcanic crater, something we would experience in coming days.
That impression would change radically over the course of our visit, but the images were a powerful reminder that we were on an island created by undersea eruptions that made the Hawaiian Islands. We were vacationing on the youngest of those islands, the one with the most active volcanos.
HILO
The Airbnb location in Hilo was ideal, a large house situated directly across from the Pacific Ocean and some its tide pools; perfect for kids’ snorkeling and fishing adventures. (It is also in a tsunami zone, which is why you see tsunami warning speakers in the first photo below.)
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Descending into an active volcano
While our grandsons were happily fishing and snorkeling in Hilo, Jani and I ventured out to Volcano National Park, in the heart of the Kilauea Cauldron. There we learned that Hawaii Island has five active volcanoes, two of which have erupted in the last five years (one recently), and that we were actually standing in one at the park. We watched a terrific movie about volcanoes and the emergence of the Hawaiian Islands from the Pacific Ocean, and then followed a ranger down into the volcano …
Visiting the Tropical Botanical Gardens
The day after experiencing the floor of the Kilauea Cauldron, we visited the Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Garden. Seeing the gardens in the rain turned out to be beneficial, magnifying the drama of water exploding through the gardens as a counterpoint to the areas bordered by the ocean, also steeped in natural turbulence. The flowers and trees were …
Akaka State Park and waterfalls
We wanted to put an exclamation point on our last day in Hilo, so we decided to visit Akaka State Park to get a glimpse of one of the world’s tallest free-falling waterfalls as well as a second waterfall, Kahuna Falls. The visit turned out to be much more …
KONA
We chose to drive the longer northern route back to Kona, hoping to see a different landscape than the volcanic barrenness of the Saddle Road. That turned out to be a great decision and an affirmation that Hawai’i had a lot more to offer than lava. The northern areas featured grasslands and hills that supported lots of livestock and apparently an entirely different culture.
As we turned south, driving along the west coast, we visited a beach that had sand-colored sand, a novelty for us since we landed here.
The Kona rental was in the quiet hills above town. It was a lovely home with a pool to the delight of our grandsons.
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Snorkeling and Diving with Giant Manta Rays
Our first activity after settling into our Kona digs was to go on a Manta Ray snorkel/dive. With great anticipation, all ten of us boarded the boat for the evening adventure that was to become on of the highlights of our trip. After a 30-minute boat ride and a short wait for the sun to set …
While most of our crew ventured to some of the nicest beaches on the west coast, Sara, our niece Sophia, and I went scuba diving. None of us dove together before and I, for one, looked forward to the camaraderie of discovering the Hawaiian Pacific together …
With Jani’s older brother Matt, and his wife Cathy, we visited a coffee plantation in the hills east of Kona. There we learned about the grades of coffee and the processes employed to produce world-renowned Kona coffee …
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park
Since the wedding was slated for the evening, we took the morning to visit Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historic Park along the southern section of the island’s west coast. We learned that this was the location of an ancient sanctuary from tribal wars…
Our nephew Kent and his fiancé, Siobhan O’Toole, planned a traditional Hawaiian wedding on the beach at sunset. Fortunately, the rains we had experienced since our arrival held off and the ceremony proceeded as planned …
Watching outriggers depart at Daybreak
Jani’s brother Matt and his wife Cathy paddle dragon boats competitively near where they live in upstate New York. Since arriving in Kona, they had been paddling Hawaiian canoes with the Kai ‘Opua Canoe Club. We went to watch their morning routine ….
On our final day in Kona, we had planned to go on a snorkel trip to Kealakekua Bay but weather conditions prevented the tour company from allowing the trip. In lieu of this excursion we found an unexpected small gem, the Kona Hawaiian Quilt Museum …
We go home; The Golding-Tessiers go South
Having aborted the original plan of snorkeling in the sun amidst myriad colorful endemic fish and green sea turtles, we visited the quilt museum (above), downtown Kona, and ended up at the lava-covered beach we originally visited on our arrival. It seemed appropriate to literally watch the sun set on our Hawaiian holiday where it all began.
Austin and Nicole stayed in Hawaii a couple of extra days, deciding to explore the southern-most part of the Big Island, where they found a green sand beach and some black sand beaches ….
Up Next …
- Early April visit to Seattle
- Gary’s mid-May dive trip to Maui, Hawai’i
