9 am - We set off to see the waterfalls near Hilo—a 2+ hour drive away. That’s probably one of the longest drives we had on our vacation. On the Kona side of the island, we drove through miles and miles of lava flows. As we started up into the foothills we encountered clouds and finally rain. It was such a stark contrast in just a few minutes of driving. As we passed through the fairly large town of Wiamea, we both wondered why it’s there. There were some cattle in a few places, so maybe ranching. Or maybe, it was the first nice place people could live and be away from the lava flows. It rained for most of the morning as we drove. The Hilo side of the island (East side) gets about 120 inches of rain in a year and it was very evident. It looks like a rain forest everywhere. Here is a photo I took on our hike to Akaka falls, but it is typical of the vegetation we saw during most of our drive there.
11:15 am. Akaka Falls is one of the longest free-falling waterfalls in the world (or so they say). We could even see it from the parking lot. We took the .4 mile round-trip hike to the falls over paved walkways with stairs and railings.
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| A sample of the beautiful plants we saw along the way. |
The falls are pretty amazing, especially with the
morning’s rain. You can see they look a
little muddy.
While
we were there, we asked a friendly couple to take our photo together.
Here is another photo of the beautiful vegetation
that we encountered on our hike back to the car. There is a small waterfall in the background,
but it’s hard to see. The size of
the ferns shows how big the plants get with the temperate climate.
12:30 pm - We traveled to a set of shops in Honomu, near the entrance to Akaka Falls for
lunch & shopping. Here is a photo of
Ed’s Bakery, where we bought three kinds of cookies (coconut macaroons,
macadamia nut & chocolate chip shortbread, and DaKine cookies: oatmeal,
coconut, raisins, macadamia nuts & chocolate chips) and a manapua each for
lunch. Hawaiian manapua is meat wrapped
in dough, then baked. I had the
barbecued chicken and Fawn had the barbecued pork. The bread around the outside was the
wonderful Hawaiian sweet bread. It was
delicious. Here is a photo of the bakery
building. The silver car in front is the
Ford Explorer we were driving during our Big Island stay.
We also shopped
and found a fun 2-sided apron with Hawaiian prints for Fawn and another Hawaiian shirt
for me.
1 pm - We traveled toward Hilo. We had wanted to see the Hawaiian Botanical
Gardens on our way, but couldn’t see a sign or what looked like the right
turn-off. So, we just kept on going to
Hilo to see Rainbow Falls. It is
unfortunate that the area around the falls is not kept up better. (Neither of us were very impressed with
Hilo. I understand it is a port city, so
maybe that explains its rundown look.) There
is an amazing amount of water flowing over the falls. It looked brownish—probably from the amount
of rain during the morning. We didn’t
see any rainbows—maybe they only appear under ideal conditions.
After our visit to the falls, we walked through—literally—a banyan tree that
was growing nearby.
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| Look how small the people are compared to the tree! |
There is
no way to adequately describe these trees.
This one was planted over 100 years ago (according to a friendly man who
was sitting up on the hill where this photo was taken). The tree basically propagates by sending “air
runners” out and taking root in different parts of the ground. It’s an amazing tree.
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| Notice how many branches have the runners going into the ground |
2 pm - On our way out of Hilo, we searched again for
the botanical gardens. We tried our
navigation system to no avail. As we
were coming back to the main highway, we saw a ‘Scenic Drive’ sign. Fawn had remembered that the gardens were on
a scenic drive, so I took it on a whim.
We wandered about 2 miles on a narrow road that was not kept up well and
just around one corner there was the parking lot for the gardens. (We found out later that there is an ordinance prohibiting any billboards or private signs along the roadway. So as a private enterprise, they are not allowed to post a sign directing people to the gardens.)
2:15
pm - We paid our admission and spent over
an hour marveling at the variety (and size!) of tropical plants. Fawn took a lot of photos of the beautiful
flowers and plants. Look at the size of
these ferns for instance:
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| Just some of the many orchid varieties in the gardens |
This is another place where words and pictures really
can’t express the amazing nature of God’s creations. We felt like we were in a pre-historic
jungle, yet most of the plants were identified with signs and the whole area is
very well maintained.
4 pm - We bought some post cards and magnets, then started on the long drive back to our condo.
5:15
pm - We reached Wainea (where it was
raining again) and decided to stop for dinner.
We stumbled upon L&L Hawaiian Barbecue Diner. It was awesome—for fast food anyway! We each had a different mini combo. The regular combos would have fed both of
us. It was great Hawaiian diner
food. The first is mine and the second
is Fawn’s. Each was served with rice and
macaroni salad. The meat was on a bed of
cabbage.
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| BBQ Chicken and Fried Mahi Mahi |
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| Teriyaki Beef & Chicken Katsu |
6 pm - We resumed our journey back to the condo,
only to get turned around on our planned route because of an accident. So, we took the interior highway
instead. It was pretty desolate, although
there were some ranches along the way.
In one area, much of the vegetation had been burned about a year ago and
was still recovering. Between the burned
area and the lava flows, we felt like we had entered another world again—so
much different than the lush world we had just left on the East side of the
island.
7:15
pm. We made a quick stop to get gas and
some motion sickness pills for our upcoming sea adventures, then finally back
to the condo.
