The Big Weekend

We managed to negotiate a day off work at the farm to take a long weekend to explore the Big Island, which has eleven different micro-climates! Found a sweet car deal on a convertible to cruise around the island in, which made the 7 hour round trip much more enjoyable!

First stop was Waipio Valley, a deep lush valley by the ocean with lots of taro farms hidden within. We walked down the steep (25% incline!) hill and explored the black sand beach and watched the wild horses swimming across the stream down there; it was a windswept and beautiful place. We then drove to Hilo, the second largest town on the island (actually no more than a small village!), exploring some tourist trap drive-up waterfalls on the way. Found an amazing sweet shop there, with loads of different flavour toffees. Stayed in a great little hostel with wooden floor boards and guests playing Jack Johnson on ukuleles!

The next morning we decided to try our hand at golf, and had excellent fun zooming around the manicured tropical course in a golf buggy (Rach being the more reckless driver of the two!). A good few missed strokes, lost golf balls and golf buggy skid marks later we then headed to Rainbow Falls. Not content with just looking we picked our way through bushes and massive Banyan trees to the smaller falls above where we swam in isolated pools and had a shower under the small waterfall that fed them. Later we explored lava tube caves with our headtorches, which were dripping with long tree roots and weird red volcanic rocks – very much off the beaten tourist track - yay!

We took the convertible to its limits for a drive up 10,000ft to Mauna Kea, where the temperature dropped to 2 degrees C! We climbed a cinder cone to watch an amazing sunset above the clouds and then joined a stargazing talk (the guy had a super cool laser that pointed up at the night sky) and cuddled hot chocolates. Drove back in the spooky full moon and filled up with pancakes in a great little diner.

Spent two days exploring a rather rainy Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Unfortunately there was no red hot lava to see as it was flowing in an inaccessible part of the park, but we did do an amazing walk across a steaming crater floor (Kilauea Iki). Dropped down through rainforest alive with bird song and fern trees in early morning and picked our way across what looked like a moonscape (it was used in the film Planet of the Apes!), with steaming vents, huge rock cracks, and hidden hot lava only 80m below us. Also we did some touring in the car to see hot sulphur vents, a ‘devastation trail’ and a walk through another massive lava tube (this one torchlit, but that didn’t stop Rach stepping in the biggest puddle down there). We camped that night in torrential rain at 4500ft elevation, falling asleep to the sounds of coqui frogs and the smell of eucalyptus trees and sulphur.

The drive back took us to Hapuna beach, which has been voted as one of the top ten in the world. We took the time to chill out and take in some sun after our manic weekend. The sand was chalk white and the sea was aquamarine blue. We lazed around until the sun set over the ocean, then drove back with the top down along the Kona coast, drinking some tasty frappucinos in the starlight.