Before I start writing about a crazy weekend on Big Island I want to apologize for the load of pictures that will await you in the next minutes. When eight people with smartphones are going on a trip together, there is ALWAYS someone taking a picture of everything!:D
Only three weeks on Hawaii and we're already taking our first trip to another island. Since almost everyone is free on Fridays and Monday was a holiday (labour day), we took the chance to explore Big Island in four days. The organization was very spontaniously and that for also quite stressful, but in the end it was completely worth it. We were a group of eight people (Camilla, Alex, Lejla, Julia, Zoe, Maurice, Sverre, and me) and rented a beautiful small House over AirBnB close to Hilo surrounded by nature.
We took the plane on Friday morning to Kona Airport on the west side of the Island. The flight took us about half an hour but it was already really beautiful as we could see all the islands of Hawaii (Oahu, Maui, and Kauai) from above for the first time. Landing on a cute little airport, we quickly changed into suitable holiday clothes and started our roadtrip with the family-van we rented for the following days to the south coast of the island.
First stop was the Kona Farmers Market where we bought the most important things: matching shell anklets for everyone and cute bracelets - how else would someone recognize that we were on Hawaii??
Driving along scenic routs our next stop was the Captain Cook Monument. Since we have some history-enthusiasts in our group (spoiler: it's not me) that was a "must-do", while Captain Cook was killed at that exact beach.
Another historic and also pretty place was the Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park (anyone wants to pronounce that?:D). That's a place where people who had broken the sacred laws, the kapu, could flee to, to escape the punishment of death.
After so much history it was time a little Pizza break for a late lunch - even with ocean views!
Originally our next destination was south point, but while we were driving Lejla suddenly spotted a sign which said "free chocolate tasting" on it, so we had to turn around and found the really cute Paradise Meadows Orchard & Bee Farm. We got to taste different types of Coffees and Macadamian nuts, grown locally on that same farm. After that we were also allowed to view all the different crops they're growing there and did a selfguided tour around the property.
After that, we really took the road to south point, the most southern point of the whole US. Some of us did some cliff jumping, others had a trink & we just enjoyed the time there and had a beautiful first sunset on big island.
Even though we were really tired after that long day, we went to the supermarket, cooked pasta back home and had a fun first night together.
Day 2 was kicked off with a morning yoga session on our cute balcony. After that and a nice breakfast together before we headed to the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, where we spent about 3-4 hours walking and driving through the whole park. We saw the huge crater in the middle and some steam coming out of the earth, but to be honest none of us were like sweaped of our feets from that experience. The massive cookie was really good though! It was still good to see and - what we didn't know at that time - we should get the "sweaped of our feet"-experience later that day.
So, my biggest (and actually only important) goal on big island was to go to the Mauna Kea Observatory and watch the sunset & the stars from there. Even the drive up to the visitor center was beautiful already, but there was a "little" obstacle awaiting us befor getting to the top: You need a four wheel drive to drive the gravel roads up there - and we only had our family car, which was not at all up for that challenge. First we were just disappointed and wanted to watch the sunset from another place close to the visitor centre, but the boys weren't really satisfied with that option and tried to hitchhike up there. So what we did was splitting up and asking other people with Jeeps, if they could take us with them.
Everything was going so fast but suddenly we were up on the mountain, over the clouds and freezing with 2 degrees - it was literally breathtaking. The views were incredible, i have never seen something like that in my life before! The only problem was the cold, because it was so spontanious, i didn't even have time to get back to our car to get my stuff, so i was up there only in my shorts and a sweater. But it was of course completely worth it and i enjoyed every second of the sunset over the clouds.
When the sun was down, we had to back to the visitor centre really quick because the roads were very tricky to drive even in daylight. Back at the parking lot we could already see the stars, which Mauna Kea is also so famous for. It is one of the best places for stargazing, we could even see the milky way in its whole beauty!
It might have come through that this was a really special experience but i also think it was the best one so far here on Hawai'i...
Day number 2 was also concluded with one or two rounds of rage cage, which was followed by a late breakfast the next day. Because Camilla and me slept in the living room we were automatically always the last ones going to bed, which led to a biiig sleep deprivation after this trip.
Sunday didn't really live up to his name, cause it rained all day long. That's why we planned on going to the waterfalls that day - fitting the atmosphere. First we went to a farmers market close to our house, got something to eat and drink and drove to the Akaka Falls from there. It was a nice little walk through the jungle to the big waterfall. Due to the rain it was actually the perfect setting and we could finally make use of our rainjackets!;)
We also visited the Rainbow Waterfalls - without a rainbow, because there was no sun - and some other secret waterfalls on the road. In between all the waterfalls we had a really good (& cheap) lunch at a unknown burgerplace, which was quite important to continue the day..
Last stop for sunday was a turtle beach, unfortunately without any turtles for us. :( Even though we made it through a jungle and heavy rains in the end, the turtles hid away from us all the time.
After all those days full of activities we were reaaally tired and happy to get home a little earlier than the other days. There was only one problem with that: We got hit by a huge truck at the parking lot of the supermarket. It was only a small scratch, but we still had to wait for the police etc. which made us come home only at 9pm again.
But of course we still had a decent last evening / night in our apartment, starting off with wraps and than moving on to cinnamon rolls and beerpong, dancing and even snorkeling. ;)
We concluded our trip with chilling at Punalu'u Beach, one of the few black sand beaches on Hawaii. We even spotted some turtles there! After "nice morning swims", like Camilla would call them, catching up on some sleep and a loooot of snacks, we made our way back to Kona on the east side of the island, got something to eat and went then back to the airport. Our flight left right in time for sunset, so we could see all of the other hawaiian island from above again, which was very beautiful in the light from the golden hour...
Little funfact in the end: The flight was actually shorter than the 16-miles-busdrive from the airport to our apartment!
That was our weekend on Big Island! Thanks for a beautiful, funny, adventurous and exhausting weekend! I feel like we had experiences for three weeks in four days and we made so many good memories together! Hope to do that again soon (maybe we can even find Peter then).. <3
#craaazyweekend #bigislandcrew #collegeboys #snorkeling