Hilo - phew

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Dahna: As we flew into Hilo and did not see any high rise buildings, we both breathed a sigh of relief. Less tourists, and lower key. We had to catch a taxi from the airport though which was a little unexpected drain on the wallet, as there were no public buses and we had a bit too much gear on us to walk comfortably. It cost nearly US$20, and it was only a 4-5km drive to the hostel we were staying at.

The friendly taxi driver was about the tenth person to tell us we'd need to rent a car in order to get about on the island. He even called his "friend" while we were in the car to get a "local, not tourist" quote for a car, but even that was $25 before tax and insurance that we did not want to spend. We thanked the driver for being kind, but stuck to our shoestring plan.

We spoilt ourselves though to a room of our own in the Hilo Bay Hostel - money well spent. It was a huge, clean room with plenty of space to spread out all our random bits of produce (at varying degrees of freshness and rotten-ness), dampish and smelly clothes, camping gear etc. We didn't have to continually re-pack and un-pack and re-pack every time we went out of the room- a routine that gets very boring.

We found a cute little farmers market and bought five papaya for $1 and similarly cheap avocado and a variety of other tropical fruits. The local supermarket had reasonably priced freshly caught fish - tuna, marlin, butterfish, various local reef fish and there was an awesome organic health food shop to fill in any gaps, so we were eating pretty healthily and cheaply. I'm such an advocate of preparing your own food on the road. Sure beats spam and rubbery pancakes.

The first day we got to Hilo we walked up to Rainbow falls about 4 kms away from the hostel. Although there was a big ugly car park right under them, the falls were still pretty - a bit more water in them than the water trickles you become accustomed to seeing in Australia.

Being the intrepid explores that we like to think we are, we ventured off the cement path and viewing platform up a track through some Indian Banyan trees to the pools at the top of the falls. There are several signs warning not to swim due to strong currents and undertows. The Lonely Planet book we had also dutifully advises this.

We brazenly stripped off to our underwear and swam in the beautiful still clear pools. Its funny how many more trepidations I had about such a simple thing as swimming in a river - something I would do without much of a thought back home in Australia. But you never know, maybe they make undertows differently in Hawaii! I was still feeling all satisfied with my bravery for defying the warning signs while I was getting dressed, until a bunch of English tourists came and ran up a tower of rocks and jumped into the water from about 10 or 15 feet up. Doh.

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Photos

Coast near Hilo as we flew in
No high rises

Beware of falling coconuts
The hazards to watch out for on the big island.

The submersible
Jono found time to be all scientific and drive a submersible. (Ok- so it was in a museum.)