There were a few last minute things we wanted to do so we headed down to Kailua first. It was a humid but overcast day. We wandered around until lunchtime and found a cafe overlooking the water for lunch. As we headed back up to the Kohala Coast, we stopped at another resort called Mauna Lani. There is a field of historical petroglyphs in here. These are early stone carvings done by the ancient Hawaiians. They are a very important part of Gawaiian history so it ...

Wow!! What a day. We set out this morning to drive the last part of the island we hadn’t yet seen - Volcanoes National Park. Along the way we drove through Kona, home to many coffee plantations. The familiar smell of coffee is in the air. We also stopped at the most famous black sand beach in a Hawaii. The sand was very coarse so it was formed by water eroding the lava rocks. It is quite a sight to see. There were also a couple of sea turtles resting on the be...

We arrived at the small boat harbour just south of the airport at 6.30am to check in for our whale watching cruise. It was a full boatload and we left the harbour about 7am. We were on the water for 3hrs and didn’t see a whale. No spouts, no fins, no breaches, no sign of whales at all. But, we did see a couple of manta rays and some spinner dolphins. We saw them spinning out if the water horizontally and vertically. They are very cool. We also got a good view o...

Today we headed along the north of the island around to Hilo.thus put us on the ‘green’ or ‘wet’ side of the island and the vegetation reflected that. We saw 3 waterfalls today, including the Rainbow Falls where you can see a rainbow in the mist when the sun is shining on it. We were too late in the day to see that but it was still beautiful. The biggest falls we saw were the Akaka Falls which drop 134 metres straight down. We walked along a trail and up ...

We started today with the breakfast buffet in the resort. It was a great way to start the day - sitting on the balcony overlooking the pool, beach and sparkling blue green water. It was hot and humid again today. We are staying on the hot and dry side if the island. This side gets about 6 inches of rain per year. The other side of the island is the wet side and gets about 100 inches of rain per year. The volcanoes in the middle suck most of the rain out if the cl...