Famous. Last. Words. We'll get to the "not that far" part in a couple of minutes. Thursday was one of my favorite days in Hawaii. We did so much that day and got to do so many things we had never done before and will probably never get to do again. We started our day at the Pana'ewa Zoo. The zoo itself was beautiful and we had a lot of fun walking around and avoiding the peacock in the middle of the sidewalk. At one point it jumped over a ledge and scared me to the point of nearly having a heart attack. Well played, peacock.
After the zoo we went to Volcano Winery for a wine tasting. $5 for a wine tasting? Sign me up! Unfortunately I'm more of a $5.99 per bottle super sweet wine girl, so I wasn't a fan of many of the types they had, but Paul liked them and we still had fun. We met a couple there that moved to the island a couple of years ago and told us about a bunch of great places to visit. Unfortunately they were talking so fast we didn't remember most of them.
Volcano National Park was our next stop. The park has a bunch of awesome little trails you can hike along to see different views of the volcano. Since you drive from trail to trail we stuck to the shorter trails {surprise, surprise} so we had more time to see more of the park. The view of the volcano was amazing and I wish we had taken our other camera with us so we could have taken a panoramic picture of the whole thing. Lesson learned - don't rely on the expensive camera for all picture taking needs. One of the trails led to a lava tube. I'd put this at the top of the list of things we did on our trip. It was just so cool to see this giant tunnel in the ground created by a bunch of hot lava right in the middle of a rainforest.
It was just a little windy that day - check out that flying hair!
We stopped at a black sand beach in hopes of finding some sea turtles. Finally, luck! There were a whole bunch of them just hanging out on the beach! Another one of my favorites.
Remember the couple we met at the winery? One of the places they told us about was the green sand beach. This wasn't even on our radar of places to go, but apparently there are only four in the entire world so we thought the slight detour was worth it. We had been warned that the 3ish mile hike takes a long time because of the winds and the rough ground. Paul and I took one look at the couple, decided we were in much better physical shape, and would have no problem reaching the beach in the hour we had to get there and back before the sun set for the night and we were left in the middle of nowhere with no light. This is where the Famous. Last. Words. part comes in.
I can't even describe the sandy, hilly, eroded-away mess we were walking through. {um...jogging...running out of daylight...go faster...this sucks!} The people at the winery told us that the local people will offer you a ride in their trucks because the pot-holes are too deep to be able to drive a car through. About 30 minutes in I was demanding we flag someone down for a ride because there was no way we were going to make it before sunset. I was imagining become a Dateline special about people being lost in the desert. Every person we kept meeting would give us a sad look and say "It's still really far." Well, that's encouraging.
So, we flagged down a stranger. And rode in their truck. {Yes, my mom's voice was flying through my head - "Don't talk to strangers. Don't get IN the stranger's vehicle! You did WHAT?!?!? What the HELL were you thinking???"} Luckily, Alfred was very nice, didn't steal me, and even offered to take our picture! The green sand beach turned out to be totally worth it since the sand really is green and so different from any other beach I've ever seen. There was a sign that said stealing the sand is a $500 fine. Alfred didn't tell us until on the way back that a local person put the sign up and there's actually no fine. Shoot.
The top of the ridge above the beach.
The picture doesn't really do it justice, but that sand really is green!
Near the green sand beach is the southern-most point in the United States. South of that? Antarctica. Think about how cool THAT is! It was nearly dark so we took some really quick pictures, and none of ourselves, but it was still pretty amazing.
We just got our pictures back and put into a photo album. {My scrap-booking mom and mother-in-law are shaming me right now!} It's been so much fun looking back on our trip and all of the fun times we had! Can't wait to share more soon!
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