HILO AND THE VOLCANO

Hilo, Hawaii home of an active Volanco. Today we arrived to overcast and gray skies with just a hint of clear skies peaking thru in Hilo.

We disembarked and got to our rental car immediately but not before I bought a wonderful plumeria lei. Man those things smell great. I loved having it and in the rental car van everyone remarked on how great it smelled.

So after picking up the car, we were off to see the Volcano. They have a lot of areas now where you can’t go either because of dangerous gases or lava flow. But still we got some great photos and we spent the entire day on the volcano exploring. It was fascinating and fun. We drove all the way down to where the lava flow cut off the road and made it impassable. Went from the top of the volcano right down to the ocean. It was truly amazing and so desolate in some spots and then remarkable rainforest type areas in other.

We laughed because at one point I said it looked like a science fiction movie and Sam said he was thinking the same thing. We went thru the lava tubes (where the lava formed cave like tubes) and it was both fun and eerie at the same time. That took quite a bit of time as it was a steep decent which sometimes are hard for me and we had to go thru the tubes which had quite a bit of water and were slippery so for us it was slow going. Some of the craters here are just unbelievable.

We decided around 3 pm to call it a day and headed back toward Hilo. Hilo is so very different from Honolulu – it is like downtown LA versus Albion (I’m sure you all get the drift). Very urban vs very rural.
Ok back to the ship and we watched the last sailaway for this cruise. Mixed emotions about going home. Hate to see it end but it is time.

Next stop LA
Sam and Char