Hawaii!! One week on the BIG ISLAND! SO much to share!!
Aloha Friends!!
As you may have heard, I just got back from an AMAZING trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. My awesome family spoiled me with the trip for my big 40th birthday.
Today I need to share all approximately my journey with you! To convey you along on my journey, in addition to a diary of my ride for my own remembrance, I notion it'd be a laugh to proportion a every day precis of the places we went and the things we noticed.
If you're making plans to tour to the Big Island or if you have Hawaii on your listing of places to visit, then I hope that you locate modern-day publish insightful.
We spent one week / 7 complete days on the Big Island. This does no longer matter the lengthy complete days of visiting on airplanes with layovers and delays to get there and lower back. Traveling turned into virtually now not the a laugh part of the ride, however it turned into really worth it.
We flew into the Kona Airport someday at some point of the night, made our way to our airbnb and went immediately to bed.
--- Day 1 / SUNDAY ---
My 40th Birthday!!!
As soon as I awakened, I ran to the window to test out our view and it become extraordinary!
A neighbor named, Daniel, who watches over the airbnb stopped by to say Hi. He then showed us a map of the island and circled all of the places he suggested we check out. This was incredibly helpful since this was obviously our first time here. We carried this map around with us and we almost saw everything that Daniel recommended.
*I introduced a blue big name on the map indicating in which we stayed.
On these days, we drove returned up to Kona and went food shopping at Costco and a grocery shop. We loaded up on plenty of pre-made food, luxurious Kona Coffee, and of direction a huge case of Kona Beer.
We got here returned to the airbnb, swam inside the pool, grilled up some steaks, had cheesecake for dessert and then we walked down the road to check out the sea.
The lava rock changed into sincerely charming! I've never seen whatever adore it before.
In all of my forty years, this was fingers down the Best Birthday Ever!
--- Day 2 / MONDAY ---
On day two we headed back up north. Our first stop was,
-Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park.
This place was everything you think of when you think of Hawaii. It was so beautiful! It was full of palm trees, lava rock, blue ocean, white sand, and awesome little tiki statues scattered about. I couldn't help myself from taking a ton of pictures. Some of these pictures were taken with my iphone 7 and the rest with my cannon rebel T3 and truthfully, I cannot tell any difference between the two. Also, my husband, Jake took a lot of these pictures as well. Just so that I give credit where it's deserved :)
This park is a sacred web site full of Hawaiian history.
This here is an historical temple floor.
The entire park is so lovely and picturesque.
The majority of all the photos I took while on our trip have been taken here.
We spotted a sea turtle and some tropical fish inside the tide pools.
I told you I took a variety of pix here.
Next, we went out to lunch at -Keoki's Ono for fish n chips. Located in Captain cook. Daniel recommended this place to us and it was so delicious! I would say this this was my favorite meal while on the island. It has a fun atmosphere as well. You eat outside and the owners have some caged birds to visit with while you wait for your food.
After our bellies have been full, we persevered driving north and located, what Daniel referred to as, "Sugar Sand Beach" It's definitely referred to as -Kekaha Kai State Park. It's located approximately four half of miles beyond the Kona airport and across from the VA cemetery. This seaside changed into Amazing!!
This beach has turquoise water, excellent smooth white sand, and the funnest waves to play in.
After the beach we headed back to our airbnb, made tacos for dinner and cuddled on the couch to watch a movie on Netflix. Every night we picked out a different water-themed family movie to watch, such as; Moana, Finding Dora, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Which was the perfect way to end the day.
--- DAY 3 / TUESDAY ---
Unfortunately, my husband, Jake got sick during the night. We suspected that it had to have been from the chili sauce he found leftover in the fridge, since except for that, we ate the same exact thing during the day. So to let him rest up, we took it easy this morning. My boys played in the pool and I enjoyed the view.
Once Jake turned into feeling higher, we headed southeast to the well-known
-Punalu'u Hawaiian Bakery.
This is located in Naalehu
Daniel insisted that we go, and I'm glad he did! Have you ever had a malasada before? OMG! It's basically just a really delicious doughnut. Here at the Punalu'u bakery they make the malasadas in a variety of tropical fruits. We tried the papaya and the lilikoi. The lilikoi was my favorite!
After we satisfied our sweet tooth's, we headed north on the Hilo side of the island. Our destination was the
-Punaluu Black Sand Beach.
This black sand seashore were on my bucket list for a completely long time and it changed into the #1 element I wanted to do in Hawaii. It always looked so spectacular in all of the photographs I've ever visible of it.
So going there with such high expectations, I honestly was a bit surprised when I got there. One, I had imagined the beach being SO much bigger! Don't get me wrong, it's a good size beach, but for some reason it turned out to be smaller than I thought it would be. And Two, I didn't expect there to be lots of people and a large concession stand there either. Ha Ha. When you see professional photographs of this beach it always looks so seclusive. LOL But it was still beautiful nonetheless.
The black sand is so unique and prefer not anything I even have ever visible before.
Another magical thing about this beach is that you are almost always guaranteed to see a sea turtle laying on the rocks or on the beach. Can you spot it?
You will also find the sea turtles swimming in the ocean. In this next picture, if you look closely, you will see a turtle poking it's little head up behind Jake.
On the beach, you have to stay 20 feet away from the turtles, but you can get as close as you want to them in the ocean. Just don't touch the turtles on the nose or they will bite your fingers off. At least that's what Daniel warned us.
Then I took a few selfies and we headed returned to our airbnb.
In the evenings we loved to watched the sun disappear into the sky. We never saw it set on the ocean. The sun always just disappeared out of nowhere.
--- Day 4 / WEDNESDAY ---
The farmers market is only open on Wednesday, so we headed back to the Hilo side of the island to go check it out. The farmers market is located right next to the Punalu'u bakery. So conveniently, we stopped back in for some more malasadas..... since we were in the area :)
The farmers marketplace became a whole lot of a laugh. We determined us some little souvenirs right here. My mom in law, Heidi turned into keen to try clean coconut milk and was glad to find it right here.
Our next forestall become to Kilauea Visitor Center to check out the Volcano!
After the black sand beach, the second biggest thing I wanted to check out was the Volcano. We were all so very excited to see what it looked like. Again, we may have had too high of hopes because this was it. This was the big volcano.....
If you drive up the road a bit, there is a place where you can hike a lava tube. The boys thought it was really tubular! :) It's a dark and cold tunnel where once lava flowed through.
Before we headed returned for domestic, we just needed to stop by way of the
-Mauna Loa Macadamia nut farm and factory for some Macadamia ice cream.
The black sand seashore changed into on our way lower back to our airbnb so I had Jake make a quick prevent. I just wanted to see it one extra time and I'm so happy I did! This time there was rarely no one at the seaside! Now I could get that Perfect Picture!! Although, I'm no longer going to lie, I did have to clone a few humans out of my snap shots....But just a few.
Also, my Mother-in-law had on higher shoes this time and become capable to walk round greater. So I'm satisfied she got to enjoy it higher this time round. Isn't she lovely!
--- Day 5 / THURSDAY ---
Well.....I think this photograph says it all:
It's called the Milolii Whale House. You can find the listing for it HERE.
We spent a lot of day out right here at the lanai.
Isn't this pineapple chandelier notable? It has a dimmer so that you could modify the light. I find it irresistible!
Now allow's head inside. All of the wood in this domestic is so stunning and absolutely makes the house feel warm and cozy. I kinda felt like we had been in a large tree residence.
Here is the dwelling room.
Across from the living room is the kitchen. The ceiling in this house is all opened and there are some window screens above to bring in a cool breeze, while ceiling fans help to circulate the air. It's really quite genius if you ask me.
The fundamental residence has bedrooms and 1 half of baths. This is the bedroom my husband and I stayed in.
I fell in love with all the wallpaper on this residence.
I didn't get round to photographing the second bed room or bathtub, but like I stated, you may view extra online.
Down stairs in a small apartment which you can only access form outside. This is where my Mother-in-law stayed. It was nice that she could have her own little space.
The wallpaper down here changed into even greater first rate!
The landscaping across the residence became amazing! We're speaking Mango trees, tropical flowers, and exquisite vegetation in the course of the backyard.
It's an amazing home, but one thing that was not so ideal is that you pretty much have to drive down a mountain to get to the house, and then back up the mountain to go anywhere. Although it did feel like "authentic Hawaii". You would not get this type of experience if you were staying at a resort hotel.
The airbnb is someplace at the left side in this photograph.
--- Day 6 / FRIDAY ---
Since we had so much fun at the "sugar sand beach" that we had gone to on Monday, we decided to go back and spend the whole day there. This time we brought along some boogie boards.
Boogie boarding turned into so much amusing! That cute little pup even went boogie boarding! I want I had a photograph of it :) The boys had quite a few amusing playing within the remarkable soft sand too.
Afterwards we went to L&L Hawiian Barbecue for some dinner, and then back to our airbnb.
And then sometime during the night both my son, Liam and I woke up sick!!!
So at this point. since we all had our share of being sick, we decided that it possibly wasn't the flu, it wasn't leftover condiments in the fridge but perhaps something else. The water there is all rainwater that they collect and save in a tank, but we didn't drink the water, we drank from water jugs. We Did brush our teeth with it though, only because we were told that we could. Hum? Or maybe it had something to do with the swimmingpool, since my mother in law didn't get sick and she never once got in the pool.
Anyway!!
It's a mystery! and TMI I'm sure :) But even being sick, we never let it keep us from enjoying our trip.
--- Day 7 / SATURDAY ---
Saturday was our last day. Unfortunately we had to be out of the airbnb by 11:00 but our flight didn't leave until 9:00 at night. So we had a full day to find things to keep us busy.
We sadly said goodbye to our home away from home and headed up to Kona to do some souvenir shopping. I made my husband stop at a fabric store that I kept eyeing every time we drove by. It was full of beautiful Hawaiian prints. So I bought a couple that I couldn't live without.
From there we headed to the -Kona Inn shopping village and did a little more souvenir shopping and stopped in one of the restaurants there for lunch. Finally snapped a pictures of all of us.
Later, we wished that we had stopped by the Greenwell coffee farm for a tour, or spent a little more time shopping at the local shops. But otherwise, we did everything that we wanted to do.
We found another pretty beach to hang out at for a bit, and then my mother in law wanted to walk around the Mormon temple there, and then finally it was time to head to the airport.
It was super sad saying goodbye to Hawaii. We had such an amazing time.
Our flight was an all-nighter. We woke up in Seattle and had hours to sit and wait until our flight home to Boise. Again, like I said, Traveling was definitly not the fun part of our trip.
It's good to be back home, but it feels like our trip went by Way too fast!
Hawaii is a BIG Island, so we weren't able to explore it all. Up higher north on the Hilo side of the island are some waterfalls, and up higher north on the Kona side of the island are some canals that you can explore by rafts. There's also a zip line and 4D adventure ride that we didn't make it to.
Another thing everyone was talking about, including Daniel, was the nighttime snorkeling tour you could take to swim with the manta rays. Apparently, this is an amazing and unforgettable experience. But by the end of our trip we just didn't have the time.
We did see and do so much. In fact, when we returned our rental car, they told us we put 721 miles on it.... so I'd say we explored quite a lot of the island.
One day I hope to see All of the beautiful islands of Hawaii. Each one is different and has something new to offer. For now I can mark Kauai and The big island of Hawaii off my list. I'm so thankful for my loving family who made this trip possible and for all of the wonderful memories we made that I will cherish forever!
Thank you for stopping by and reminiscing about my trip with me.
Please let me know if you have any questions or any comment you would like to add in a comment below
Mahalo!
Emily