Blogs from Big Island, Hawaii, United States, North America

Tour Day 7, Cruise Day 7, Hilo Hi – Hilo's Waterfalls & Gardens Tour (6 Hours) – The Hilo Walk of Fame is comprised of a series of banyan trees planted by celebrities. You'll drive through this leafy labyrinth en route to Liliuokalani Gardens. The latter is the most extensive ornamental Japanese garden outside of Japan. View one of Hawaii's most important statues of King Kamehameha -- the man who unified the islands into a kingdom. Enjoy expert commentary from your guide as you pass through the town of Hilo to Wailuku State Park. This is where you will find picturesque Rainbow Falls. Continue to the majestic Akaka State Park, where two gorgeous waterfalls tumble into an eroded gorge. The first is the 100-foot Kahuna Falls, and the second is the towering Akaka Falls, which plummets ... read more

Well, all good things have to come to an end. All bad things do too, but we won’t worry about that. Today was a magnificent THREE hour snorkel at Two-step, which really has such a wide-ranging variety of environments that even today we picked up two NEW FISH. Plus, with our new Scuba Fish Hawaii app, we’ve been realizing that some taken in the past need renaming. So we are concluding that we have found 20 new fish. (and because we found the parrots this afternoon, 10 new birds). After that 3 hours, we had a lovely hour chatting to friend Pam again, and a new friend who also was traveling alone. We all enjoyed the ice creams sold on the corner, and had a few rambutans for lunch. We “saved” a few families from killing ... read more

Miraculously, David’s foot feels good today – still red and a bit swollen, and frankly tender on the top side, but he was able to put his snorkel bootie on, and also his flippers. So we were back in business. Off we went to Two Step again, which is 45 mins to the south. It was amazing, and we stayed out in the water 2 hours and 40 mins. In fact, we chatted to a couple who had been in and out already, and said, well goodbye because you won’t see us again. (And later, when another couple was in this spot, they said – we wondered if you’d gotten lost because the previous people told us they’d met you.) Because the tide was reasonably high, we went in the same way we’d gotten out the ... read more

Friday? Yep. After our hearty breakfast of bacon-flavored Spam and eggs we got to the beach inside the Mauna Lani fancy hotel area, where we had to ask for a pass – 3 more spaces only. It was PERFECT – hardly any waves, and excellent visibility. We saw a WHITE TIPPED REEF SHARK (moves too fast for photo). And a rare (though we see them all the time in Aruba) Flying Gunard. What a wonderful way to spend 2 hours. We saw a man coming in with a bag full of golf balls so just for fun we went searching for one – and found it! I sat out for about 20 minutes with an interesting man named Steve from Rochester NY, who says he runs a national TV show on hunting. We’ll have to “hunt” ... read more

A dry day for us, and evidently a rare dry day expected in rainy Hilo, which is on the eastern “windward” side of the island. Hopefully it will also give the waves on the western side of the island a bit of time to calm down. I forgot to mention that we gave a nod to Hawaiian culture by buying SPAM. Evidently one can find spam sushi but we haven’t seen it yet. There are 4-5 types, judging from the small market we went in, and we’ve had it fried up with eggs for breakfast twice now. This one had bacon in it – or the flavor thereof? First stop as we were inland? Our favorite golf course yet again, in hopes of seeing the one bird we are missing that should be there. It was ... read more