Up until this point in our visit to Big Island, we had driven across the Northern part of the island, gone down the eastern coast to Hilo and explored the surrounding area, moved back along the southern coast to Black Sand Beach, and worked our way back up the western coast to Kona and the surrounding area. We had, in fact, gone around the whole island. We were starting to wind down our time on Big Island, and we wanted to do a few more things. First and foremost, we wanted a beach somewhere. And we wanted to see another waterfall, perhaps where we could go swimming.

For Day 9, we headed back to the northern coast. We booked an excursion with a local company that promised us views of Waimea Valley. It’s advertised as stunning in all the guidebooks, but when you look a little more closely, it is clear that there is a big limitation. The road down into the valley is super steep, and just as with limitations that you do not go to the top of the summit road, most car rentals are NOT rated for this hill. Heck, even hiking on the northern coast comes with multiple signs of a dangerous shorebreak, hazardous cliffs, strong currents, falling rocks, and even the dangers of monk seals on the shore.

The excursion started past the Valley, at a small office overlooking the ocean. Almost like a small cottage village, not the heavy loads of the rest of the island. Looked more like where locals might go, except for the entrances to golf courses and country clubs down the road. A short bus ride later, and we were hiking along an access road, before diverting onto a trail. It basically took us along the ridge of the valley, so you didn’t have to go all the way to the bottom and all the way back up. Fine with me. Some parts of the trail were pretty close to the edge of a long slide to the bottom. Not particularly dangerous, and Andrea and I had proper footwear for the hike. But still, a bit more rugged in places than what we had done earlier, before opening up into wider fields. The views were awesome.

There were lots of cool trees and canopies. The only real challenge in hiking was not to trip over really complex root systems.

Eventually, we got near the end of the valley to a waterfall. Most of the waterfalls in the area were not particularly “running” right then, a bit drier than normal, but we found a working waterfall and pond. And we got to swim.

After the swim, we headed back to the bus and then drove around a bit on our own to get pics of the entrance to the valley. I find it a bit odd on my Apple TV that there are a series of screensavers, one of which is a drone flying out of this valley towards the ocean.

I think I mentioned back on Day 1 that we found the Northern part of the Island kind of odd. While we expected lots of lush green tropical land, there are parts that are almost desert or tundra.

We had done our hike on the eastern side of Waimea Valley, and if you continued west past the valley (as per a shot above of the mouth of the valley), there’s a long unbroken coast. Quite spectacular and totally inaccessible. Well, mostly. You can go all the way around and come at it from the west, which is where there were all the signs about danger. Decent view, though.

We hiked part of the way down (the Pololu Trail), but it was a bit more rugged and tiring than I wanted. Instead, we headed across the rest of the northern coast and then down the western coast back towards Kona. Andrea really wanted a nice beach to visit but the views were pretty great along the way.

Eventually we came to one along the Kohalo Coast.

But we got to walk on a real beach with nice sand.

Unfortunately, we were still a fair distance from Kona, looking forward to a late dinner, and then we would leave this island the next day. We drove more across the northern and western coasts, and finally pulled over to watch a very nice sunset for our last night on Big Island.

Writing up the summary for Day 09, I realize that I have forgotten some stuff. I don’t have our travel diary handy, and I relied heavily on our pictures to remind me of the story. Some things I never covered:

• On the day where I referenced the Ironman starting point, we drove up the side of the mountain into some smaller switchbacks and towns. There was an “artist” village where a bunch of local artists or mainland transports have set up little buildings and we could walk from store to store seeing some of their products.
• Somewhere around Day 07, it was Andrea’s birthday and we went to a really nice restaurant a minute or two past the downtown strip for Kona so Andrea could have some good seafood. It was our second “outing” to get good seafood for her, with a previous attempt at Hilo. This one was far superior, no idea the name of the place, but we had a great dinner.

I’m sure there are other missing elements, some other meals we went for, or outings for supplies. I really didn’t want to leave Kona the next day. The fact we were moving on to another island took some of the sting out of it, but it remains the best vacation I’ve ever been on. I would love to retire there, or even just move there if we could do remote work across borders. 🙂