The Big Island - Day 9

We were up at the crack of dawn to catch our 50 minute flight to the Big Island of Hawaii today.

Kona Airport is the quaintest airport we have ever seen - in true tropical fashion, it is all open air huts! No walls only a roof! - ok, so there are a few walls for the security areas etc... 😊

Pauly must have fluttered his eyelashes at the girls at Alamo car rental as he walked out with an upgrade & the keys to another convertible for our stay on this island. This time it was a Mustang! We loaded her up with our luggage and headed to the resort in the hope we could get an early check-in - the Sheraton staff were brilliant and had a room ready to go. We dumped the luggage and hit the road again, bound for the north of the island.

The coastline here is spectacular! The contrast of black lava flows with turquoise waters and green Mountain ranges is simply breathtaking - completely different to O'ahu. The two larger volcanoes, Mauna Kea & Mauna Loa, dominate the barren landscape on the middle of the island and the change in weather conditions are more random & extreme than Melbourne! They have Vog here as well as Fog! Vog is volcanic dust clouds that sometimes sweep over the island depending on weather conditions and volcanic activity. Very cool - although probably not if you have allergies or asthma 🤔

Anyways, we travelled the coastline to the end of the road - Pololu Valley Overlook. An incredibly diverse scene awaited us; a valley that looked like it was straight out of the Jurassic era meeting a black sand beach that was flanked by lava layered sheer cliffs. Awesome!

We headed back to the resort via Kohala which is on top of a ridge and is primarily "cowboy country" - We got some awesome shots of the coastline from up here!

By the time we got back, we were famished & had dinner at Ray's on the Bay restaurant where we were lucky to be treated to a traditional Hawaiian show whilst eating dinner and watching the sun go down. After all of this, we headed back to our room and watched the Manta Ray's come in to feed on plankton!Read more