Kailua Kona April 13, 2012

We watched the sunrise over Kona as we arrived at 7:00 am. Beautiful. The highs today were again in the mid 70's. Seas are calm, we are both excited about our waterfall adventure.

For Kona we opted to do the Kohala Waterfalls Adventure. Our tour guide Stephanie picked us up in a van for the drive to the remote north end of the island. There were only 5 couples in our group. Unfortunately, there was one couple that were a pair of sourpusses and complained most of the time. Stephanie provided us with a very informative narrative about the rich natural and cultural heritage of the island. Kona is on one side of the Big Island and only receives about 20 inches of rainfall per year so you see a lot of the volcanic rock along the drive. You have mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other, quite an impressive drive.

Mountain in distance with volcanic rock

We arrived in the small town of Kapaau in North Kohala which is the birthplace of King Kamehameha and where his original statue resides in front of the Civic Center.

In Kapaau we made a brief stop to use the facilities and to change vehicles. We will continue on to the falls in a rugged Pinzgauer. It was quite a bumpy ride but we saw some beautiful scenery. The further north we got the more the scenery changes from the volcanic rock to rich vegetation. Once we arrive at our destination, Stephanie leads us on a 1.5 mile hike with an abundance of waterfalls, some bridges and idyllic streams. We saw some traditional Hawaiian taro terraces and irrigation flumes.

Taro Terrace

We saw some truly spectacular waterfalls. The area was rich and lush with foliage and vegetation. At one waterfall we even had the opportunity to swim. Rusty was the only adventurous soul as the water was ice cold.

As Rusty and I both love waterfalls, this was a wonderful choice for us. We could have spent more times there exploring and hiking.

 

After the waterfalls we took the German truck to a picnic area to have our lunch. What views of the Pacific we had from this spot.

The Kohala waterfalls were truly spectacular.







We departed Kona at 6:00 pm. We were scheduled to be around the Mount Kilauea Volcano around midnight to see if we could see activity on the volcano. Unfortunately we were unable to view Kilauea as it was just too overcast. We continued on our way to Hilo.