16 August 2011: Waikoloa, Hilo, and Volcano, Hawaii

We woke up nice and early for a long day of sightseeing.  We left our resort and headed north into Waikoloa Village. We found the Kaukau Depot (their website/Facebook page is here and their TripAdvisor page is here), which is just across the street from the main Waikoloa Shopping Center. This place is a small joint and all of the people there (except for us) knew each other. They were all crazy friendly and a lot of fun to be around. We got some breakfast, me some pancakes and bacon and Cin some French Toast, all of which was awesome (but with huge portion sizes!). If you’re looking for a good breakfast with lots of cool people, check this place out. It doesn’t look like much from the outside (or the inside), but the food and the people are great.

We then drove across the top portion of the Big Island, eventually ending up in Hilo, the other big town on the island besides Kona. Hilo is older, more “forgotten” (there are a lot of closed storefronts and other similar things), and much more rainy. Apparently, the average yearly rainfall in Kona is four inches and the average yearly rainfall in Hilo is eleven feet. Wowsers. Anyway, we headed to the Hilo Airport for our helicopter tour with Blue Hawaiian Helicopters. This was amazing. We flew down to the volcanoes and the lava spills and saw so much. We saw so many lava spills from the air, we saw where an entire town had been wiped out from an eruption, we saw active lava, and we saw where most of a town had been except for one house and a section of road in front of it, which is now rented out as a very expensive vacation get-a-way, with the primary access only via helicopter. So cool. If you are looking for a way to see the volcanic nature of the Big Island, check out Blue Hawaiian Helicopters. We flew on their Eco-Star aircraft with Captain Ray, who was amazing and did an awesome job showing us the volcanic nature of Hawaii. I simply cannot say enough about how awesome this adventure was.

Lava goes all the way to the coast.

There is a (small) active lava flow from these.

Active lava flow.

More active lava flow.

There used to be a town under here. All the residents evacuated.

Awesome shot of the Big Island's eastern coast.

After the helicopter ride, we went back into downtown Hilo and got lunch at a local joint named Café Pesto (their webpage is here and their TripAdvisor page is here). I had a pizza and Cin had a smoked turkey sandwich, both of which were awesome. She also got a salad, which was all organic and local greens and a sweet bail pesto dressing that was just amazing. I still regret not getting one. After an awesome lunch, we went and found a couple waterfalls in the Hilo area, seeing Rainbow Falls, the Boiling Pots, Peepee Falls, and then Akaka Falls, all of which were pretty good. Akaka Falls, by far, takes the cake…this is an awesome sight to see!

Me, with Akaka Falls in the background.

Cin and Akaka Falls.

This is a BIG waterfall.

Done with waterfalls, we headed down to Volcano. Along the way, we took a 4mi scenic route around Onomea Bay, north of Hilo, that did have some very scenic views and we saw a lot of very high-end houses…pretty cool. We entered the Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park, saw the steam vents (so warm!), and then the sulphur vents, where lots of lots of sulphur was thrust into the air. So cool to see. Then, we found the Kilauea Crater and saw some awesome steam coming off of that. Next up was the Thurston Lava Tube, which was located in the middle of a rain forest region that was awesome to hike through (both the rain forest and the lava tube). Then, back to the Kilauea Crater at sunset (around 7.30pm), as the loss of sunlight turned the steam into a very reddish/orangeish spectacle. Lots and lots of people had shown up at this point near the Jaggar Museum in the park to see this and it was totally worth the effort. It was also quite cold at this point, so bring a sweatshirt if you choose to do this...I brought three on this trip and brought none on this drive, so I was out of luck, which meant I was freezing while Cin took some (awesome) pictures.

This only made me want to go in more.

Sulphur venting.

Kilauea Crater, with bonus rainbow.

Us at the entrance to the Thurston Lava Tube.

Me, in the Thurston Lava Tube.

The Kilauea Crater at sundown...the color change was awesome!

After seeing the volcanoes, we headed back to Hilo (Volcano to Hilo is about one hour in driving time, 45min if you’re speedy but the roads are quite twisty and turny). We stopped for dinner at a place right outside the Hilo Airport named Ken’s, which is a diner that came recommended from the guy at our resort that set up our helicopter tour (their webpage is here and their TripAdvisor page is here). This place was all right…the menu is huge and the food, well, diner-ish. It’s a diner and that’s that. Cin had a grilled cheese sandwich and I had a beef dish with fries. Normal diner type stuff.

A long drive back (it is about two hours from Hilo to Waikoloa) and we parked the Jeep. When we did so, we noticed that there were cats in the parking lot of the Hilton…lots of cats. We noticed a cat before at the Kona Brewery and Pub and then another one at the Hilton earlier. It seems that the big island has a lot of cats, all of which come out at night. Bizarre. Anyway, we walked back to the room and collapsed on the bed…such a long (and awesome!) day!