After the gardens, we headed into Hilo, a decently-sized city for lunch. We weren't exactly sure where we should stop for lunch, or where we should even head in the city to find something to eat. Once again, thankfully Zach had his phone available, so he checked out restaurants close-by. We finally decided on a place called Pineapples. I mean, that's pretty fitting, right? It was an open restaurant, so you could enjoy the fresh sea air, and they even had a lady singing with her ukelele that was really good. The food itself was fantastic.

Zach had tuna tacos, I had coconut-crusted tuna (can you tell we were really trying to get out fill of good tuna?), and my parents had fish and chips. All of the dishes were fantastic. The fish was so wonderfully fresh. I mean, when you're next the ocean, why wouldn't you have fish. Especially when you're from the prairies.

After lunch we hung around the area, looking into the art galleries and shops near by. There was some really cool art that I would have just loved to take home, but it's way to big or expensive. You know how it is, right?

From there we were deciding whether we wanted to make the VERY long trip down to the south to go see the lava fields or do something else. It would have taken hours to go see the lava fields, and there hadn't been an reported activity for a long time, so it seemed like a waste, so we decided to, instead, go to the Hilo zoo that someone had suggested to us. That might sound a bit weird, but a lot of times zoo's have native animals that you wouldn't see otherwise, and plus, this zoo was free!

The zoo was actually fairly large, as far as free zoo's go. We were excited to go see the white tiger they had, but apparently it had died a few months earlier. (And it now seems to be a family catch-phrase: you just can't control things - the tiger is dead.) But, they had some Hawaiian geese called Ne-ne's that apparently pretty rare, and they had Hawaiian donkeys that looked like normal donkey's, and deer and lemurs. They had quite an extensive collection of different types of parrots. And a collection of amphibians, including poisonous frogs.

I was super excited because with their collection of tropical birds (and some really cool pheasant-type things) they had a toucan! I've always wanted to see a toucan, but every zoo I've been to (and I've been to lots) has never had a toucan. He was smaller than I expected, but just as fantastic. I'd love to have one.

And then, even better, on our way out of the zoo, we finally saw the anteater they said they had. A giant anteater. That was, in fact, GIANT. I had no idea they could get that big! It was bigger than I pig. (How else to you classify that size of animal?) Something else I'd never seen before - and man was he cool.

Stopped for some icecream on our way out of Hilo. Although it was overcast most of the day, it was still stupidly hot and humid. We took a drive through one of the public parks next to the ocean in Hilo as we started back home. There were some fantastic buildings and trees in there, but we weren't in the mood to stop. The drive back home seemed shorter than the drive out, but that was probably because we didn't take the old highway past the botanical gardens.

Of course, for supper, we hadn't had our fill of tuna, so we ended up using the leftover tuna from the night before in a lovely salad. What a way to end the day. Of course, Zach wanted to go hang out in the hottub at night, like he had the past couple nights. I can't see how sitting in a hottub is nice when it's so hot out, even at night, so I went for a swim in the pool and read a bit on the deck. There was practically no one around, so I had the pool to myself and I admit I spent quite a long time just floating there and staring up at the stars. Zach, in the meantime, was chatting away to the people in the hottub, and had gotten some insider information on the best snorkel spots nearby. It was a while before we packed up and headed back to the condo.

We also saw a mongoose. Thought it was a squirrel.