Sunday, December 14, 2008

Our Trip to Hawaii

We arrived at Kona Airport after a long flight. The airport was like none other I have been to so far. It was incredible. The buildings themselves were made out of wood that you could smell as soon as you walked into each building.
The planes parked away from the building as we exited the planes via a stair ramp.
Everyone was just relieved to finally be in Hawaii and ready for a vacation.
Our Condos that we stayed in were nice! Each Condo had two bedrooms with two bathrooms, a family room, and a kitchen. They also had a washer and a dryer in each Condo. The kitchen was very useful as we decided to mostly cook our meals the whole week to save money.
We waisted no time and went straight to snorkeling at a spot which quickly became my favorite beach on the entire trip.
At this spot we saw several turtles.


Paul and Staci Joined us. They had already been on the island for a few days before we arrived.

After the first day we decided to take a trip around the island to see the green part of the island. Kona is covered with a lot of Lava rock while the opposite side of the island at Hilo gets a large volume of rainfall every year making it a jungle of green foliage. We stopped at rainbow falls to take a few pictures.



It's hard to get a good perspective on just how dense the vegetation was. It was awesome to see!
There were several trees that had a huge base of what looked like many trees combined. The canopy of these trees spread clear out beyond the base.
More of the dense foliage.

This is the caldera of Volcano on the southeast side of the island.
It is an active volcano that has lava flowing on a regular basis. The lava has switched direction several times and ruined some of the roads that we couldn't travel on any longer due to the lava. Later that day we walked out onto the lava fields and saw where the lava goes into the ocean growing the island every year. Unfortunately the pictures didn't turn out well as it was late at night.
We finished after a long day by driving the 3 hour trip back around the island where we all prepared for the wedding the next day by trying to get a few hours of sleep.

4 comments:

Lisa said...

I loved reading about the trip and I am so glad that it went well. It looks so beautiful! I can't wait to hear more details.

Will & Cheyenne said...

Oh my gosh, I am jealous! Swimming with the sea turtles was by far our favorite! Hope you guys had a great time!

the Maisey's said...

Hawaii souds awesome right now with this cold weather...Lucky duckies!!

Jaimee said...

I am so jealous! It looks amazing! A trip to Hawaii, how divine!