Denis is visiting! Yay! We got up super early yesterday, and got on this tiny plane:
And we flew to the Big Island! Woo hoo! We came to see the volcano, so we went there right away. Kilauea is currently active, so we were excited to see what we could see. Unfortunately, they keep people pretty far away from the crater, so all we could see was smoke:
I downloaded a tour-guide app for the volcano national park, and we started driving it. The app told us to stop at a lava tube and walk through it. It was a short little walk, but it was very cool.
The app also told us about a walk down in the crater and how the “shortcut” was next to the lava tube. We could see the crater from the lava tube parking lot, and it looked cool. It was huge. There are people in this picture on the well-worn path through the middle:
What we didn’t realize was that this was a full-blown hiking trail. It was only rated “moderate”, but still, we weren’t quite expecting two hours of vigorous hiking. It was cool though. I’m glad we did it.
AND…. I saw some mamaki growing in the wild. So cool!
By the time we finished the hike, we were beat. We decided to finish the rest of the driving tour another day, and just head to the hotel. The room has a beautiful view:
We rested a little, visited the pool, then had a dinner of appetizers. Mmm. I slept really well last night.
Good for you! That looks like a lot of fun. Except for the small plane. Yikes!
Yay!!!! Hi, Denis!! What a fun vacation!!
The scale of that trail is freaking me out. I thought it was a little walking path but apparently it’s much bigger. Still cool though. That lava tube! (Can you tell I’m very excited?)
There maybe many lava tubes, however it looks like the one we went through many years ago. I had a terrible time getting through it because of claustrophobia.!