Day 1: Departure

At last this day we have been looking forward to has arrived - the day we leave for our 16-day vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii. It was an early start - waking up at 2:45 AM to catch a Delta Airbus A319 for Minneapolis. Here we are at James Armstrong International Airport in Winnipeg as our friendly driver from London Limos dropped us off:

We boarded our A319 for a short one-hour flight to Minneapolis. Here we are enjoying the comforts of the first class cabin: 

A layover of about three hours in Minneapolis, most of it spent in the Delta SkyClub lounge:

Then we boarded one of Delta's beautiful Airbus A330-300 widebody jets. Here was our home for he next eight and a half hours:

Here's Dona checking out the little amenities kit Delta gave each one of us:

Connecting through Honolulu International, we had to make our way from the international & mainland terminal over to the inter-island terminal so we could catch a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717 to Kona. Between each terminal are these beautiful gardens:

Funny thing when you notice the terminal facility has such an open air construction. In some places the walls are open; they're not sealed from the element. Then you realize they have no winters here, so why not have open air spaces?

As we waited for our flight to Kona, we caught our first Hawaiian sunset:

A short flight to Kona, pick up our Jeep at Thrifty, then drive a familiar route to our condo. After being awake for nearly 24 hours, we finally got some sleep.

Thursday: Hilo!

Thursday was our day trip to the east side of the Big Island, to Hilo. Known as the wet side, it gets just over a hundred inches of rain annually. It's a drive of just over two hours each way. Along the way you see many changes in climate, from tropical to prairie to rain forest. It's truly amazing. Here's the view a few minutes outside of Keauhou, where our house is located:

Half an hour later we're in the middle of a prairie:

  

Waimea for a pit stop:

Through the Hamakua Forest Reserve: 

And over gorges:

Our first stop was Rainbow Falls:

That's a lava tube behind the falling water:

This is a banyan tree on the hill next to the falls. Reminds you of Home Tree from the movie Avatar:

The view from the top of the falls looking downstream:

After lunch at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, our next stop was the black sand beach in the heart of Hilo. Beautiful fine-grained sand, formed from lava: 

Next stop was the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut farm where the famous macadamia nuts are grown, roasted and packaged. We have been waiting over a year to return to this place and have some of their incredible macadamia nut ice cream: 

Of course, we bought a few boxes and bags of macadamia nuts from the visitor center.

Next up was the Akatsuka Orchid Garden. A greenhouse renowned for the many varieties of orchids you can buy. Sadly, we can't ship any home to Canada without the required permits from the Canada Border Services Agency. Oh well, it was wonderful to explore the place.

Finally it was time to head home to Kona. We drove back the same way we came, around the north shore of the island. These are monkey trees in downtown Hilo:

Downtown Hilo:

There's a noticeable difference between Hilo and Kona in terms of the age of the buildings. Hilo looks older, and clearly there is less money in their economy compared to Kona.

On the drive back we saw Mauna Kea illuminated by the setting sun. Look real close and you might be able to see the astronomy observatories on top:

Back home at our rented beach house in Keahou, it was the end of a long but exciting day. We saw nearly everything this time as we did on our cruise 14 months ago, and we had much more time to gawk and explore.

Tomorrow: more diving.