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Halema'uma'u Crater
According to the tradition, this crater is the home of the Hawaiian goddess of fire - Pele We wanted to celebrate our first Valentine’s Day after the wedding in style… something different… and the answer was - Hawaii Volcano National Park! It is the home to one of the most active volcanoes in the world - Kilauea. This national park is located on the Hawaii’s Big Island.
The Big Island, also known as the Island of Hawai’i or the Big Isle, is the biggest island of the State of Hawaii and still growing! It is also the youngest amongst the all.
Nearest airport from the national park is in the city of Hilo. Hilo is approximately 36 miles away from the national park. Hilo airport is a very small airport. However, it has number of flights operating quite frequently everyday between Hilo and other islands (mainly Oahu). There is also a commuters’ terminal near the airport which offers helicopter as well as micro-light rides over the active volcano.
We had a flight at 8:45 am from the Honolulu International Airport. We reached the airport quite early thanks to the Robert’s shuttle. Fortunately, we got the seats on the earlier flight without paying anything extra! This gave us an extra hour for our day-trip to the
Lava River
Lava flow at Kilauea Volcano Volcanoes National Park!
We had reserved a car at the Hilo airport. Good thing we had reserved it a day in advance, as on that day, everything was rented out! Renting a car here is quite expensive (approximately $75/day for an economy car compared to $20/day at other locations in the mainland US), however, quite worth it! As, this island is quite big with minimal public transportation.
We had a reservation for Helicopter Volcano Expedition with Safari Helicopters at 2 pm! Air-rides are the only way to visit the active volcano of Kilauea. By road, you can only travel to the extinct volcano points and visitor centers. Nonetheless, you will learn a lot about volcanoes and their evolutions visiting different points inside the national park by road, total volcano experience might be incomplete without taking one of these air-rides to see the active volcano!
The weather can change drastically here during the day. Hilo is the wettest city of the United States! There was a forecast of rainfall on the day we had chosen. This could mean cancelation of helicopter ride! However, to our pleasant surprise, it turned out to be a partly cloudy day with no
rain!
We drove to the Volcanoes National Park and stopped at number of points to see the steam and sulfur emission around the Halema’uma’u Crater, and some really informative exhibits. We also visited the Thurston Lava Tube - a 350 years old lava tube, rain forests, and Jaggar museum. Along the way, we came across extinct lava beds; however, at that time, it was not allowed to stop there due to high amount of sulfur dioxide gas emission at the volcano’s summit.
We soon drove back to the airport for our helicopter expedition! On the way, we stopped at Subway to have some quick lunch.
Helicopter ride was amazing! Once in a life time experience! We got the front seats thanks to our maintained body weight! This one hour long helicopter ride included the views of active volcano of Kilauea, a village destroyed due to recent volcano explosions, a road blocked by lava, a beach made of lava beds, and some wonderful water falls along the way! Our helicopter pilot was quite interesting and knowledgeable. He took us quite close to the active volcano. We didn’t exactly see the volcano eruption as we see on Discovery Channel…
Lava Beach
Beach made up of Lava beds It depends on that day’s lava activity. However, we did see a lava river, gas emission, and number of trees burnt by the lava!
After the helicopter ride, we still had more than three hours before the flight back to Honolulu. We decided to check out some waterfalls in the area in this time. We drove to Akaka Fall and Rainbow Fall on Wailuku River. Both the waterfalls are quite close to the city of Hilo. And one of very few waterfalls accessible directly without hikes.
The whole day was really exciting and full of fun! However, both of us were quite exhausted by the time we took our flight back and reached the hotel.
Some useful links:
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Safari Helicopters All About the Big Island of Hawaii by About.com
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