Monday, February 27, 2012

Aloha 2012! Days 5, 6, and 7

On our fifth day of vacation, we took the morning to find a white sandy beach and went boogie boarding. As you know, I'm a Californian who grew up quite near the beach, so I've boogie boarded plenty of times as a kid. And I've body surfed when I couldn't be bothered with a board. But, just as a reference, Avila Beach has cold water. Not so cold that a brazen kid can't handle the surf in a swimsuit... but cold enough that our moms would call us back to shore every 15-20 minutes to warm up.

Hawaii, however, has warm water. All I can say is... wow. I boogie boarded as long as I could, despite being pretty tired. Again, no pictures, but it was so fun to boogie board and hang out in the surf with Mark, Steph, and Julia. And the surf was INTENSE! No baby waves you can jump over. You either ride the wave or it gives you a ride on the sandy floor. If I lived near surf like that, I would certainly pick up surfing. Take the cold out of it and it is amazing!

The next day we went and toured a coffee plantation., Greenwell Farms. I LOVE COFFEE. You see how many choices we had? We were encouraged to try them all. What can I say? I did! YUM. My favorite was the chocolate macadamia nut blend. I bought two pounds of it to bring home, and even with the strict rationing my k-cup allows, I am sorry to say it is now gone :(


Considering how much I love coffee, I was surprised by how little I knew about it. I didn't even know the "beans" are actually little cherry pits. Silly me, I thought Jack grew them on a beanstalk because they are so magical!


I highly recommend a coffee plantation tour to anyone visiting Kona. But I especially suggest it for coffee lovers, and I especially suggest Greenwell Farms! Seriously the coffee was so good I drank it black. I never drink black coffee!

On our last day in Kona, Mark and I were on our own as we had a red eye home. We toured the town of Kona, watched a football game at a bar (with some incredibly potent mai tais...) and had a dinner date. And so our great Hawaiian adventure ended! We're already dreaming up what we would do on a future trip, probably to different islands, but for sure to include snorkeling!

You can see all of the pictures we (Mark) took on our trip by viewing our Picasa albums, dated 12-28 thru 1-2. And if you check those out, you can get a sneak peak of our NYC trip! 


Sunday, February 26, 2012

Aloha 2012! Day 4

At the time, I wasn't really able to pick a favorite day or favorite thing we did. And honestly, every day and everything was amazing! But now that it's um... later... (cough nearly two months cough) I think I'm ready to pronounce Day 4 my most favorite! We had a snorkel cruise scheduled and a laid back evening at our vacation house for New Year's Eve.

This was our ship. Yes, those are slides. Mark went on them but I was having too much fun snorkeling! I was one of the last ones out of the water. Steph and Julia were THE last ones out!




We didn't take any pictures of us actually snorkeling. Not much to see but butts and fins and snorkel tubes sticking out of the water! We had inner tubes which were nice to start with but I ditched mine pretty quickly.

On the way back, grinning ear to ear, we had two more surprises for us. The first was that a pod of dolphins decided to escort us. This is the only picture we got but there were several, all playing in the wake of the boat. As a Californian, I've seen my share of dolphins, seals, and otters. But this experience blew me away.


And just when we thought our trip couldn't get any better, that we couldn't possibly see anything else more amazing than what we'd seen in the past few days, we found two whales breeching and waiving at us. 


The captain didn't want to get too close out of respect for the whales, and Mark wasn't exactly traveling around with a telephoto lens, but he still grabbed this shot (above.) Probably a bigger testament to the experience is how enthralled all the humans were (below.)


Everyone was silent, besides cheers when the whales showed themselves to us. And at the end, when the whales waived, we all waived back.

And here we are, post snorkel cruise! Exhausted, but clearly happy and having a fantastic time!


As a finale, 2011 ended with one last sunset. I can't say 2011 was a good year, despite the fact that some really good things happened. But it was a full year, and one that, at the very least, we can say we ended with family, love, and a gorgeous sunset.


Saturday, February 25, 2012

Aloha 2012! Day 3

On our third day in Hawaii, we finished up the Volcano/Hilo side of the island and then headed over to Kona. Before driving over to Kona though, we took one last tour through Volcano National Park. Taking advantage of the early start and low crowds, we hiked through a lava tube. This isn't actually a tube of lava, but rather a tube created by lava. But no one wants to call it "big gaping tunnel that the lava made and is sorta tube like."


After the lava tube we walked through the sulfur flats. These were amazing! The trail was paved an elevated, and apparently the ground was so hot it could burn you. Or at least there were unpredictable pockets of heat that you could get burned by. No ROUS sightings though. 




As one last stop in Volcano National Park, we drove back to where Mark took the picture of the active part of the Volcano. This is what it looks like during the day! Amazing! If anyone wants to study light, I highly recommend a trip to Hawaii because every time we turned around, the light changed and challenged us to rethink what we were seeing.


After a yummy lunch, we started our drive towards Kona. We stopped at Black Sand Beach Park, where the sand was indeed black and the sea turtles let us gawk at them.





Dragging ourselves away from the sea turtles, (they really were awe inspiring) we drove a bit out of our way to South Point. South Point, aptly named, is the southern most point in the United States.



And Mark took one of my all time favorite pictures ever. I think this one is going to end up on our wall!


We finally made it to Kona, grabbed some grub, and went to sleep. There were even more adventures awaiting us on the other side of the island!

Friday, February 24, 2012

Aloha 2012! Day 2

Quite a bit belated but it is what it is!

Our second day was a Volcano day for us. We started by heading to Hawaii Volcano National Park. I think we're unofficially collecting pictures of ourselves standing in front of national park entrance signs.



After hitting up the visitor's center and driving through the park a bit, we headed out on a hike to get a good idea of the landscape. The prevailing theme seemed to be "Life Beats Lava." Which, heck, considering the year we all had in 2011, sure is a relief to find true! It was so inspiring to see the different levels of habitat growth throughout the area. This lava bear was also pretty amazing! The hike itself was on a little bit of slippery ground... I wanted to run part of it but quickly decided that running on loose uneven ground was a bad idea.


From parts of the hike we could see the volcano spewing. It wasn't erupting, just active in the sense that stuff was coming out. I would call it smoke. Pretty cool stuff!


The light throughout the day stunned us at every turn. We truly began to feel that paradise feeling. So many times we'd turn a corner or crest a hill and find ourselves looking at varying bits of sunlight sprinkling the landscape. Gorgeous, breathtaking, and in a way, healing.


Ok, obligatory "couple with a view" pose. I thought I was being so clever by standing on ground a bit higher up from Mark, but alas he's still so much taller me.


 A bit later in the day we hiked out to where some lava flowed right over the road. Lava beats road.



After watching a gorgeous sunset, we headed back to our rental house for some dinner and rest.


Finally, before we were all completely tired out from the day, we headed back to the park to check out the volcano at night. Let's just say my illusion of smoke was dissolved! I couldn't believe that what I thought was smoke earlier was this:


And with that Mark has declared that if it ever truly erupts again in our lifetime (which it likely will), then we'll be on the first flight to Hilo that we can catch.