Hawaii Big Island - Volcano National Park

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Caught early morning flight to Hilo on Hawaii's Big Island for our tour of Volcano National Park. We to a sweet factory and watched workers making biscuits coated in dried squid and dipped in chocolate (the Asians love it apparently), then went to a macadamia nut factory only to have them explain that their macadamia nuts came from Queensland – ho hum. We finally went to see the volcano lava fields and craters - never got to see any magma or lava lake (although it was definitely there) but we did get to walk over a 20 yr old lava flow which was pretty amazing. We visited the main caldera Kīlauea and saw it’s huge 2 mile wide crater and a smaller crater within it which was spewing sulphur from deep within its belly – lucky for us the wind was blowing the other way otherwise the area around the crater is closed to visitors because the air becomes quite toxic. We drove around and saw a few more old lava flows, then went to see a lava tube – this one was 500 years old - quite young compared to Queensland’s lava tubes which are 10’s of thousands of years old.

Flew back to Oahu where all the locals had been celebrating King Kamehameha Day but it might has well have been Tokyo Day judging by all the Japanese tourists around and everything being spoken in that language !! Hawaii might as well be called Japan Version 2 these days as they seem to have taken over the whole of Waikiki Beach !!

We watched the Friday night fireworks then went and had dinner at Jimmy Buffet’s bar & grill before heading back to our hotel for a good night;s sleep.

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