North America,  Travel Stories,  USA

Exploring the Hilo area and sunset on Maunakea

Aloha from Crispy Cream on Maui. You’ve gotta love the traveller’s life. I’ve only been on the road for just over 2 weeks and my plans had to be changed multiple times. The reason I’m sitting at Crispy Creme today, writing a blog post, is that I missed my bus 2 days ago in Kona. I wrote about it in my last post. It was too hard to get back to Hilo, so I rebooked my flight and I arrived in Maui earlier than planned. My car wasn’t available when I arrived at the car company, so now I’m passing time at Crispy Cream.

But let’s get to the real story. I was going to write about my last few days on the Big Island. I was super lucky to find a Couchsurfing host that was very accommodating and helpful. Initially, I was only going to catch up with him while doing my work-away in Hilo. But when things changed at the work-away I asked Matt if I could stay. Matt is currently in the process of moving, so he has a home in Hilo and in Kona. He picked me up together with another couchsurfer. Her name was Marie and she is from Japan. The 3 of us connected well and we had so much fun exploring for the next few days. The highlight was the first day when we drove around the Hilo area. We went to the Hilo Farmer’s Market. When we arrived it was a little disappointing, because even though it was Sunday a lot of the vendors weren’t there. Turns out Saturday is their big day. But we still enjoyed checking out and tasting all the different fruit.

We then drove to two great waterfalls. The first one was Rainbow Falls which is very close to Hilo and free to visit. It is a quick drive from the center. We then went to the Akaka Falls. The drive was a little longer but the falls are a lot larger. Entry is only $1 so it doesn’t break the bank. You can go on a little loop. It’s perfect for ‘lazy’ people that don’t like hiking. It’s an easy loop that takes about 20-30min. The falls are very high and looked stunning.

We also went to see some more lava tubes. These were a lot bigger than what I’ve seen before. They looked more like big caves. You could walk quite far in one of them. After passing a section with a very low hanging roof, you could reach a bigger section which led deep into the earth. We didn’t go too far, but I was quite fascinated by these tubes, because it’s so hard to imagine that hot lava once flowed through them and it left behind these huge tunnels.

After a little break at home, we took off to Maunkea, which is the other big volcano on the island. This trip was certainly the second biggest highlight on my trip so far. It takes about an hour from Hilo to drive up to the visitor center. You can go all the way to the top, but we were running out of time. We had amazing views from where we were so all good.

We were 9,200f high and it was freezing. Luckily I had read about how cold it gets, so I had lots of warm clothes, a beanie and gloves. At times, they even have snow up there. You are so high that you are above the clouds and it was so beautiful to see the clouds float through the valleys below and the sunset was just stunning. Most people left right after the sun had set, but we stayed around longer which paid off because the light and mood up there were so beautiful and peaceful. Finally, we got too cold and we jumped back in the car. We drove partially down the hill before stopping for some star gazing. You can imagine what the stars look like if you are above the clouds with no lights around. Stars everywhere and you can see the Milky Way. I can only recommend everyone visiting the Big Island to drive up Maunakea and experience both the sunset and the starlit sky.

The next day we had planned to hike to a green sand beach. There are only 4 of them in the whole world, but unfortunately, we got unlucky with the weather. It was raining so we decided to skip it. We went to the most southern bakery in the US though. It’s called Punalu’u Bake Shop and I can recommend stopping if you pass by. Prices are very reasonable and everything is very tasty.

Until next time, Sabine xxx

Check out the photos and videos below. Click on the thumbnail to enlarge images.

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