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On day seven we spent the entire day at Volcanoes National Park.  It’s just like your typical national park, lots of trails and nature, but this one has a volcano too!  When we got there we were just in time to catch a ranger guided tour into the caldera of Kilauea.  The caldera was closed because the air quality is always changing, so the only way to get down there is on one of these tours.

It was a nice tour down.  The tour guide pointed out different vegetation and explained how vulnerable the indigenous plants, and animals are because they evolved to not have any defense mechanisms.  People have brought other plants to the islands and they grow wild suffocating out other plants.  Wild pigs are their biggest problem.  They eat big areas of vegetation leaving big holes, which fill up with water.  The water is breading grounds for mosquitoes, which spread disease, and kill indigenous birds, which then aren’t there to pollinate the plants, so even more plants die off.  It one big vicious circle.

Inside the Kilauea caldera was pretty cool.  It’s probably as close as a person can get to Halema’uma’u crater.  That is where it is still active and steaming.  Kilauea is actually the longest active volcano.  It’s been flowing since 1982, and the flows are always changing.  When we were there all the flows were underground.

After the tour to the Kilauea caldera we checked out a few other things in the park, some steam vents, some old lava tubes where lava once flowed underground, and a bunch of old lava flows.  We followed the old lava flows down to the cost.  It was pretty impressive.

We stayed in the park until sunset to see the glow from Halema’uma’u crater.  It was pretty cool, but too far away to get a decent picture.  Seeing Kilauea was pretty darn cool, and obviously a learning experience.

Day five we left Oahu, and went to the Big Island.  We stayed in Hilo, which is the second largest city in Hawaii, but still rather small.  The whole island really felt small townish.  The first day we just went for a drive to check the island out.  We drove up the north shore since our plans for the next day were to go south.  Many areas felt like I was at home.  They had rolling hills of farmland, and little crappy towns with just a bar and convenience store.

Day six we drove sound to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach.  The black sand was weird.  Since it was black, your mind thinks you will get dirty in it, but it’s sand so it just brushes off.  That beach is famous for it’s sea turtles, but they were all out it the water, so we just saw a head peeking up from time to time.

After the beach we kept driving south.  That evening we were going night snorkeling with manta rays in Kona, but had the day to explore.

We then went to South Point.  It’s the southern most tip of the US.  It was a long rough road out there, and it really felt like the middle of nowhere.  At the point there was a cliff and people were jumping off into the ocean.  It was a crazy high cliff.  I didn’t even like to get close to the edge.  The Wife was crazy and wanted to jump.  I wasn’t going to let her, but then a few guys just jumped and were waiting for her in the water.  She jumped and hit the water hard.  She got a huge bruise on her leg, and lost her contacts when she hit the water.  She was a good sport about it though, and didn’t complain much about her pain.

From there we went on to go snorkeling with manta rays.  We went on a short catamaran ride and were just off the shore.  They placed a light rig in the water.  The light attracts plankton, which in turn attracts the manta rays.  It didn’t take long for them to appear.  It was so peaceful just floating in the water and watching how graceful the giant manta rays were.  They would come at the lights and just do flips eating up all the plankton they could get.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from night snorkeling, but it was pretty amazing.  It was just quite and peaceful watching the fish and manta rays swim around.

From there we had a crazy drive across the island.  I just set the GPS and followed it.  It was crazy drive through the middle of nowhere.  It was a very windy road with places that the road was actually missing.  It was super dark, and raining, and half the drive was uphill where it was hard to get over 40 MPH, and the second half was downhill and I never touched the gas peddle for the longest time, and it was hard not to speed.  I was so glad when we finally made it back to our hotel.

On our fourth day in Hawaii we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay.  This was only my second time ever snorkeling, and my best experience.  The Wife said it was nicer when she went snorkeling in Mexico though.  The water and beach were so nice.  I could have spent all day there, but we only had two hours, so I was out in the water basically the whole time.

We got back to our room around noon, so then we got cleaned up, grabbed a bite it eat, then spent a little more time on the beach.

That evening we went on a sunset catamaran ride.  It was a pretty sweet boat, and a nice little group of people on it.  We had an amazing view of downtown Honolulu, Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head Crater from out on the boat.  It wasn’t whale season, so we didn’t see any whales, but we did see a few dolphins briefly.  It was probably one of my favorite things we did in Hawaii, and it was the cheapest thing we did also.

On our third day in Honolulu we were picked up by another tour guide in the morning.  We went on a “circle island” tour.  We basically went around the island stopping off at different points.  We saw very nice and less crowded beaches.  We went up into the mountains and saw some incredible views.  We saw the Dole plantations, and stopped and had the best pineapple ice cream I have ever had.

Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I wasn’t sure what to expect there, but everything I read was that it was a must visit.  I don’t know if I agree, but we did have a good time.  The Polynesian Cultural Center is actually located on a BYU campus, and it pretty much ran by the students.  When we first got there we watched a little parade on a river when students were demonstrating different island cultural dances.

After the parade it was a little boring.  We walked around looking at different cultural demonstrations of different things.

Evenings at the Cultural Center they have a luau.  The luau was interesting, and it was nice to have some good local food, but it did seem very commercialized.  Later talking to other people I leaned that pretty much all the luaus on the island are that way now.

After the luau was watched an amazing show that included a lot of fire dancing.  The Polynesian Cultural Center may have been a little boring during the day, the food and show definitely made it worth the price.

Day two our tour guide picked us up at 6:00 AM to visit Pearl Harbor.  We wanted to see as much of Pearl Harbor as possible, so we choose the “Day at Pearl Harbor” package. 

First we saw the Arizona Memorial, which was smaller and more unimpressive as I would have thought, but still pretty cool to see.  It was sad seeing all the names, and knowing many were still on the ship below us.

We then toured the USS Bowfin Submarine.  It was pretty cool, but I have toured other submarines, and it wasn’t much different. 

Then we toured the USS Missouri Battleship.  I have also toured many navel ships, so this one wasn’t much different.  We had a great tour guide that pointed out a dent in the side of the ship that was caused by a Japanese Kamikaze plane.  The dent was the only damage to the ship, but the dead Japanese pilot was left laying on the ship.  The thing that was cool was they gave him a proper burial at sea.  Although he was the enemy, he died fighting for his country and deserved a proper burial.  It felt weird standing in the spot where so much chaos happened so many years ago.  I felt that way the whole time we were in Pearl Harbor.

We then toured the Pacific Aviation Museum.  There they are restoring many planes, mostly by volunteers.  We saw many that were done, and then went into another building as saw some in the process of being restored.  The building still has bullet holes, and shot out windows from World War II.  Some of the planes were used as props in the movie, and we saw the lookout tower that’s in the movie.  I probably should see the movie now.

After all that our tour guide brought us back to our hotel, but we hit terrible rush hour traffic.  All the stopping and going was getting me car sick.  I rarely get car sick, but after the long day, I was.  I was lucky enough to make it back to our hotel before I throwing up.  I felt much better after that, but wanted a decent meal, that I knew would be good, so we ate at Margaritaville.  We wanted to avoid chains, but we have never ate at one before, and we knew the food would be good, and it was — best tuna steak I have ever had.