Edward's Blog

Ever since Chloe introduced the Acai bowl to us in Honolulu, I think we’ve been craving acai. This is where Basik comes into the picture.

Pure delicious acai for my final breakfast on this trip. Never had anything like it and certainly a great way to end Hawaii.

There were also some amazing cookies that we picked up before heading back to Cali.

Farewell Hawaii, until next time…

The final thing we did on Hilo side was ziplining! 9 ziplines of pure awesomeness.

After that, we drove along the north side of the Big Island, which was a refreshing change from the boring Saddle road. We stopped at a taco place for lunch and brought the food togo so we can enjoy the Hapuna Beach State Park.

Then it was time to hit up our timeshare for 1 day.

The living room was absolutely massive! I kind of wish we had stayed here all 3 nights on the Big Island, but saving the commute to the volcano was still worth staying in Hilo.

We found an awesome poke place called Da poke shack for dinner where we loaded it up on the seafood. Seriously the best poke I’ve ever had!

There was lots of shopping around downtown Kona although we didn’t spend too much time here.

We barely managed to catch the sunset in Kona. I don’t feel like I have ever seen a sunset with a larger sun. This photo doesn’t do justice.

Ended up getting a deal for night time snorkeling with manta rays. $50 was certainly worth it and being the only boat out there just made the deal sweeter.

We were pretty lucky that we hadn’t planned anything for this night. It just worked out.

We started the day off by having breakfast at Ken’s house of pancakes. I believe Hilo only has one restaurant for everything since there isn’t enough foot traffic here to support more restaurants. Anyways this diner had some pretty decent omelettes and the Portuguese Sausage seems to be really popular in Hawaii.

This morning we were set on finding some souvenirs in Hilo, although there isn’t much shopping here except one on street along the water. We stumbled across a farmer’s market where we found the largest avocados I have ever seen.

We hit up a place called Two Ladies Kitchen that had some delicious strawberry mochi, definitely the largest I’ve ever seen.

After lunch, it was time to hit up Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It supposedly better go to from the afternoon to night time and you really only need 5 hours max to see everything. Our first stop was the steam vents.

It was a quick photo spot and we were onto something cooler, the Thurston Lava Tube. This was the eerie looking entrance.

Inside the lava tubes, it was completely empty for awhile until a huge tour bus came and flooded the tube with people. Luckily, I took a shot of the tube while it was empty.

Our next stop was the devastation trail. There is some vegetation slowly growing back here, but a large part of the ground is still desolate.

We saw a lot of signs like this while we were driving. For the most part, we didn’t really smell any sulfur.

We hiked about 2 miles RTT to reach the largest petroglyph fields in Hawaii. They were pretty cool, but I didn’t really enjoy hiking over all that hardened lava.

At the very end of the road, we saw the Holei Sea Arch. It is advised not to walk on the sea arch since it is unstable and may fall in at any time.

Part of the road was overrun from repeated lava flows, and this is all that remains of the road.

From here, we had about an hour to make it back to the Hawaii Volcano Observatory via the Chain of Craters. We made it there around 7o’clock and there was still some light so the lava glow was a bit hard to see.

We ended the night with some delicious dinner from Pineapples. I ordered the kahlua pork sandwich, which was absolutely delicious. Not much else to do in Hilo at night so we just kicked it at the hotel.

This was our final day on Maui, but I certainly plan on coming back to this gorgeous island.

The Ka’anapali Beach Hotel was located right next to Blackrock, so I couldn’t resist to take a quick pic before we checked out that day.

Our first destination was the Nakalele Blowhole.

It is supposedly quite dangerous here during high tide, which is when the Blowhole is most active. The water shoots out at extremely high speeds and can catch people by surprise. We arrived around 10am, which was about 45 minutes away from high tide. Unfortunately we didn’t see any action that day, but I heard the spray can reach up to 30 feet.

As a result of the calm high tide, we were able to find the Heart Rock. Really spectacular especially if it is natural.

After that, we spent about 1.5 hours on a winding road and a good part of it was a one lane road.

We barely made it to the airport in time, but luckily it was a really small airline so they were more flexible. This was the nine person plane that we flew in from Maui to Big Island.

This was a view of the Big Island, which was where we would be staying for the next 3 days.

After we landed, we had a 2 hour drive from one side of the island to the other side via Saddle Road. We checked in to Dolphin Bay and then we just kind of chilled. We hit up a Japanese garden that was nearby to chill.

There was also the coconut island where we saw a coconut tree that was marked with the heights of past tsunamis.

After sunset, we hit up Cafe 100, which supposedly has the best Loco mocos in town. I must say it was pretty good, but definitely not as good as Rainbow Drive-In in Honolulu.

We hit up Stillwell’s bakery for a large breakfast before heading to the Road to Hana.

Our first stop on Road to Hana was the four falls of Na’ili’ili-Haele. Here is the entrance to this awesome adventure.

At the beginning, we hiked through a thick bamboo forest that had a bunch of forks so it was really easy to get loss. Luckily we met some people along the way who pointed us in the right direction.

The hike was pretty strenuous since we had to climb over so many rocks.

To get to the final fall, we had to swim across a small pond.

On Road to Hana, we had to pass a lot of one way bridges.

The next interesting destination was Pua’a Ka’a State Park. We found a secluded pool that feeds water into the viaducts.

It was nice and refreshing to take a plunge and a good photo op also since there wasn’t anyone else there.

We also hit up the end of the Nahiku Road where we had a gorgeous view of the Maui shore.

The next stop was Wai’anapanapa Cave. We arrived a little after 6pm so the park was technically closed already so we parked the jeep outside the gate so it wouldn’t be locked away. A brief hike next to mosquito infected water brought us to the destination.

Our final two destinations ended up being beaches. One was a black sand beach.

The other was a red sand beach.

They were located on opposite faces of the hill, which shows how diverse Maui is.

We never had a chance to grab lunch on Road to Hana, so by the time we were passing through Kahului, we were starving. We stopped at Flatbread to grab some delicious oven-baked pizza.

Later that night, I spend about 30 minutes trying my hand at astrophotography. This was a shot of the big dipper.

Kind of boring, but it was my first successful shot!

We didn’t have anything planned for the morning so we just hit up Liliha Bakery, which is known for its coco puffs. The coco puffs look like normal pastries on the outside, but it was packed with a coco puff surprise on the inside.

When we returned the convertible, I didn’t realize I had to refill the gas tank before I returned it so that cost us quite a bit.

After we landed in Maui, our Jeep was waiting outside with the keys in the ignition. Gotta love that Avis Preferred Service.

We snorkeled at Black Rock, which had much better water conditions compared to Hanauma Bay. We saw our first sea turtles here and followed it around for about 30 minutes.

After this, we headed for the Old Lahaiana Luau for an AYCE Hawaiian buffet.

Unlimited alcohol, beautiful surroundings, and Hawaiian entertainment led to an awesome night.