Big Island Hawaii - Day 3

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ZIPLINES, VOLCANOES, HELICOPTERS & AN EARLY START

4:45am the alarm goes off.. no it wasn't an alarm, it was Grant - GET UP, we've got to GO.. my least favourite alarm!!

We drove to the nearest big resort to be picked up by James from Kapohokine Adventures for the "big day" of our holiday - the rest is R&R (baby).. A 2 hour drive and we were at Hilo on the other side of the Island. Again, (as the three boys slept!) I was amazed at the change of scenery from Kona to Hilo.. At peak we were over 2000m above sea level.. Blondie here said - is that just low lying cloud in front of us, as the sun was rising.. "no, that's not low lying, we are at 6600ft (2000m+).. Ahhh... OK..

We arrived at Hilo a little early and went to check out Rainbow Falls at the suggestion of James.. Beautiful..

We were then taken to the office/shop and checked in, were weighed and measured for our equipment and signed our life away with the safety waivers.. From there, after grabbing a coffee we were transported through private land that had been leased by the zip line company. This land housed macadamias, papayas, purple sweet potato, bees/honey and a huge eucalyptus plantation.. They were telling us that the plantation was planted with not much knowledge of how eucalyptus grow, so they were planted really close together - these are some weird looking eucalypts.. They are straight up, with not many branches.. Strange to see.. Apparently they planned to harvest them, but because they planted them so close together they're pretty useless.

Upon arrival at the zip line we were introduced to "Dishman", Allison and their 16 peacocks that live on the property which were all named Jeffrey which the boys thought was hilarious - any mother of boys, think "my name is Jeff" and you'll get it.. We were suited up in our zip line gear that the boys claimed gave them a super wedgie.. We were given a safety briefing and we're ready to rock and roll.. They said "you can be anyone today - no one knows you here.." Kai said "cool - I'll be batman!" - he was known as Batman for the remainder of the day..

By this stage I was scared out of my wits and when we were asked to climb the first rope bridge to the platform I was near beside myself.. Felt physically sick, shaking like a leaf (scared of heights) and yelling at the boys who were seemingly fine with dangling over the side.. My goodness, I was petrified..

We then started the zipline - starting out over grass, then over trees, then over huge waterfalls and rainforest. There was 8 zip lines in total and the last was the longest and definitely the highest. Some were so long that the boys got stuck a couple of times without enough weight to keep them moving - this wasn't a problem for the guides who went out and crawled upside down to get them back to the platform. At one stage Kai was hanging out about 2/3 of the way and Dishman had to try and "fish" him from the other line - everyone else was in hysterics, even Kai, who wasn't phased one little bit. Both Taj and Kai had a grin from ear to ear the whole way.. Me.. well I got the hang of it and in the end it was the platforms and the rope bridges that freaked me out the most - it's a high earthquake zone so everything is built with a bit of a wobble and you could definitely feel that ! We had a picnic lunch at line 4 and gave our legs a break - I had to laugh at Kai, all buckled and suited and hopping round "how the hell do I go to the toilet?" he said..

Anyway, here's a breakdown of the whole "adventure" well worth the time and $$ if you visit the area - even for those scaredy cats like me!!
- CLICK HERE

NEXT! We were transported back to the office after being treated with a freezing cold peppermint face washer - mental note to make these on my return!

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We were then transported to Hilo Airport for our helicopter tour over Volcano National Park

We were greeted by "Eric" who was to be our new 'guide'.. It was amusing as the girl that drove us out said "here's Eric, he'll be looking after you now", we hopped out of the van and said "hi Eric!", he said hi, then jumped into the wan we'd just got out of and disappeared!! We spent a fair bit of time saying "where the hell did Eric go".. FYI, he never returned! We went to the Blue Hawaiian Helicopter desk and not quite knowing where we should be, we hit jackpot and they had our booking.

We had enough time to head to the bathrooms and then we were taken into a room for a safety briefing. Regular flight stuff, life jackets, don't touch the doors etc etc (TAJ!!) and we were on our way to the tarmac. We were given an order dependent on weight - 1. Grant, 2. Taj, 3. Kai and 4. Me.. This meant Taj and Grant in the front beside the pilot and Kai and I in the back.

We were loaded onto the chopper in that order and strapped in.. BUT it wasn't to be.. the pilot got in and 30 seconds later was saying to his ground staff "I can't fly this", "warning 7".. so we were all unloaded and taken back off the tarmac.. we were told that we would need to wait for the next chopper to come in.. About 10 minutes later it arrived, so we repeated the above and were loaded back onto chopper #2.... BUT... after we were buckled in we once again had an issue - no biggy.. the chopper had no petrol... SO.. we were unloaded AGAIN so that the pilot could re-fuel.. 3rd time lucky, we took off.. and man, was it worth the wait.. First we went and took a look at the waterfalls - amazing stuff - I will admit to being a little white knuckled when we were ducking down to view the falls, but I had Kai by my side holding onto me, but the best was yet to come.. VOLCANOES.. Holy dooley.. words cannot explain.. From the air you can see where the lava has flowed down and gotten so close to taking out a town..



The volcanoes at the moment are active but not threatening.. and on one of their clearest days in a while we were treated to two active volcanoes instead of the normal one.. probably had something to do with being mucked around in the start too.. Words cannot describe zipping down from the air sideways to view the top of the volcano.. you think "yeah, there's a little bit of lava flow", until the pilot says, now look at the building and the cars beside the park - the building was the volcano museum and the lava we could see was three times as big as that, and the cars looked like pin pricks.. It was truly amazing..

When we landed there was still no Eric, but Ken had arrived to continue with us on our huge day.. Ken drove us into Volcano National Park and took us close to the volcano whilst it was still light to see what we were seeing from the air.. From there he took us to another area to see the lava tubes.. Very very cool, and in darkness, a little scary.. To think that these tubes were made by massive lava flows is crazy..

"A 500-year old lava cave located within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Lava caves like this are formed when a river of lava gradually builds solid walls and a ceiling. When the lava flow stops and the last of it passes downhill, a cave is formed. These caves can be a few feet high and only yards long, or they can stretch for miles with high ceilings. There are several lava tubes you can visit around the island but Nahuku is the most easily accessible and is a fantastic example of a massive lava cave"

Next we were taken to Volcano Hous e - A restaurant within the park with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the active volcano. God love them, the boys had hotdogs and Grant and I sampled the local Mahi - Lovely with a glass of white after our HUGE day..



Our guide Ken ate with us and MAN was this guy a wealth of knowledge.. I sat next to him on the ride out to the park and took it all in, I wish I could have recorded him.. So so knowledgeable. It's funny - most of the people working in hospitality and tourism over here are not native Hawaiians, Seattle, San Francisco, Ohio.. Everywhere else but local..

Ken then took us to the volcano museum which sits right beside the active volcano - the view in the night was spectacular and my photography skills certainly didn't do any justice to the sights.. It was FREEZING.. and I mean FREEZING at this stage (about 7pm) and after a look through the museum and oooohing and aaaaahing over the volcano we were ready to hit the road for our apartment on the other side of the island - a two hour drive.. Ken said most people are quiet at this stage after a long day, I thought i'd be fine, but the kids and I were out.. woken when we returned to Kona.. Poor old Ken would have been talking to himself!



All in all, a spectacular day.. ABSOLUTELY amazing.. everything went well, and I would definitely give it 5 HUGE stars..

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