waterfalls – The PolyBlog

Honeymoon recap 05 – Hilo park, Rainbow Falls, and Black Sand Beach

January 28 2015

Day 5 in Hawaii was a bit of a sad day as we had to leave Hilo to head to the other side of the island. We had only been there 4 days, but already we were starting the “Hawaiian tourist” conversation with ourselves of “what-would-we-do-if-we-lived-here”. It was awesome in Hilo. But we were booked for only 4 days on that side of the island, and it was time to move on to Kona. Before leaving Hilo, we wanted to explore a bit around the park next to our hotel. Note that Hilo is a much quieter, simpler world compared to the hustle and bustle of Kona (the other side of the island). Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have a strip with Walmart and restaurants and stuff, it does, but no giant cruise ships docking, no “pier mentality” that exists in a lot of tourist ports. It just seemed like there were a lot more regular people around.

This is our hotel, not that we saw much of it. There was a pool out of sight to the left — we never used it. There were at least two restaurants inside, and we used the one the first night, I think, and the other for breakfast, but other than that, we were out and gone for the day.

I confess this was the first time I’d ever seen a stand-up paddleboard. It looked ridiculously easy, but apparently, it is quite hard to learn to balance properly.

Time to check off another bucket list item — seeing wild sea turtles swimming free!

The next two types of trees are variations of banyan trees, both with intricate root and limb structures, and incredible canopies per tree. One of my favourite sights was directly opposite the hotel, where there were rows of these trees. So unlike anything you see in and around Ottawa.

Yes, the cliché is true: there are lots of Japanese tourists in Hawaii, which isn’t surprising since they are only a single direct flight away, and there are, therefore, lots of little Japanese-style pagodas in parks. This one had a panda in it, so obviously even more special!

We finally left the hotel and started moseying towards Kona. Still within Hilo, a little ways west of the main part of the downtown area, is a park called Rainbow Falls. I think it’s what we saw on the helicopter ride, but we concentrated only on the first waterfalls seen here.

Nice still waters, nobody around.

And a tree with bright orange blossoms. Great colours.

Continuing across the south end of the island, we stopped for lunch in the volcano park and then drove for a while before taking a rest stop at Black Sand Beach. The guidebooks all raved about this site, but to tell you the truth, I have no idea why. Yes, it was black sand. Yes, it was a beach. Yes, there were turtles swimming around. But it wasn’t an awesome beach; the sand was a bit coarse, and the view wasn’t spectacular. Interesting, but I’m glad we didn’t have to detour to get to it.

We left the beach in the early afternoon and kept driving to Kona. For such a small distance on the map, it seemed like we would never get there. We stopped a couple of times, but mostly, we spent the day in relatively slow-paced transit, winding our way across the island up the western coast to Kona. As I mentioned above, Kona is a “port” town that springs to life when the ships hit the dock. When we arrived, there was no ship and everything seemed to be in “wind-down” mode. Which was fine for us. We checked in, made plans for the next day courtesy of a tour operator’s place, had a snow cone, and wandered back to our hotel. A nice, relaxing day in Paradise, albeit with a long, slow drive in the middle of it.

Honeymoon recap 01 – Arrival and Akaka Falls

January 25 2015

Andrea and I were married on a Saturday, did the brunch thing with guests on Sunday, took the Monday to relax and pack, and then headed to the airport on Tuesday. We overnighted in San Francisco and then on to Hawaii (the Big Island) on Wednesday. We had decided to spend about 10 days on the Big Island, splitting our time between Hilo (on the East) and Kona (on the West). Since the airport is just north of Kona on the west coast of the island, we had to pick up our rental car and drive to the other side of the island to Hilo.

Despite our early morning flight to the island, we weren’t in any rush to get to Hilo. We wanted to see some of the island, and since we thought we would probably take the Southern route on the way to Kona after we were done in Hilo, we decided to take the Northern route. Going that way takes about 3-4 hours if you’re not pushing it too hard, and we weren’t.

Of course, one thinks of Hawaii as extremely lush, tropical, and well, to put it bluntly, green. The North-Western part of the island looks like tundra. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself:

Not exactly what most people think of when they think of Hawaii. But we continued on, and soon we were deep in the green belt we had expected.

We weren’t sure if we were going to get back up the Eastern coast while we were in Hilo, particularly as most of the big attractions are South of the city, so we decided that if there were any big things to see on the way, we’d stop. We hadn’t really planned much of this part of the trip, expecting mainly to just get to the hotel that day, maybe swim in the pool, etc. It was a vacation, we were relaxing!

We stopped for lunch in a condo town, and after we finally caught up to the green belt, we motored on for most of the day. A few golf courses, and some small villages here and there, but nothing pulling us in. Until we got to Akaka Falls. It’s a small state park not too far North of Hilo, and since Andrea and I love our waterfalls (look Panda, chutes!), we detoured from the main highway and started to climb up the side of the hills. The road was pretty good, with a few small switchbacks to a plateau and then a small drive to the parking lot for the park. We hadn’t really planned on it, as I said, but in retrospect, it was probably the best thing we could have done that day. Not too taxing, and every shrub, plant and bush reminded us we weren’t in Ontario anymore.