I flew out to Hawaii back on July 12 (way before I had any thoughts about making a blog) for a family trip. We usually go on trips once a year, and I was pretty excited for this one. It’d be my first time on a US state outside the lower 48.
We had two flights—one to LAX and another one to HNL. I’ve been on many connecting flights in my life, but this one might’ve been the most infuriating. Our flight to LAX was delayed by over two hours. Not only that, our other flight to HNL, was also delayed by about an hour.
Despite the long journey, we did eventually make it to Oahu. The morning after the flight I managed to take some pretty decent photos of the view of the hotel. It was pretty surreal to see mountains, since the landscape in southern Ontario where I’ve always lived is about the flattest region in the province.
Throughout the trip, I had plenty of different foods, but one of my favourites was probably an acai bowl from a local store called Island Vintage Coffee. The only picture I have of it is this impromptu photo that my mom took. Unfortunately, I found out recently that these don’t even come from Hawaii.
That same day we went to Diamond Head State Monument and hiked to the summit. This hike wasn’t anything notably difficult, but the scorching heat did make it seem like it was. Although the view was spectacular, the views that I saw on Big Island (scroll down!) were objectively a lot better.
On the third day of being on Oahu, we flew to Hilo, Hawaii. Hilo is the most populous city on the Island of Hawaii, which is often just called the Big Island. This is where most of the incredible sightseeing took place on my trip.
We had a rental car and drove to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which is where we saw Kilauea, an active volcano. It turned out to be erupting right when we arrived, which seems to happen every 11 days from a quick Google search. We got pretty lucky with our timing. I didn’t even think it was real when I initially saw it. When was the last time you saw a volcano, let alone an active one?
We drove around more of the national park and saw more incredible sights. These views were about as incredible as when I went to California almost three years ago now.
Another day on the island and I received a text from my friend telling me about Kona coffee, and how it’s a specialty coffee only grown in Hawaii. I had never heard of this coffee, but it’s apparently extremely well known around the world. I’ve never been much of a coffee connoisseur, it’s often just something I drink for the energy. However, upon writing this blog, I realized that the coffee I drank from Island Vintage Coffee was made with Kona. That probably explained why it tasted better than any coffee I drank at home.
While still on Big Island, we managed to find a pack of 100% Kona coffee at Costco and bought it. It was definitely expensive, but if it’s world famous, why not get it while we were still there?
The last couple days on Big Island were spent doing more sightseeing. I got the opportunity to go to the top of Mauna Kea, which is the highest point in all of Hawaii. This volcano is actually the tallest mountain the world, if you measure it from the ocean floor to the summit. Being on a peak this high might seem cool, but unfortunately the atmospheric pressure up there is about 40% lower than at sea level, making it a lot harder to breathe. We were originally up there to see the sunset, but lack of air made a lot less enjoyable. Fortunately, I did get a good view of the top of the summit.
The part I was excited for was surprisingly not the top of the mountain, but the bottom of it. The visitor centre of Mauna Kea is famous for its stargazing. I’ve always lived near the big city, so seeing stars has always been something I wouldn’t be able to do. Even though the stars were phenomenal, I learned that unfortunately the naked eye isn’t able to see the majority of the Milky Way like the photos on Google Images. Only a good camera is able to capture that.
Shortly after that day, we flew back to Oahu and did things like snorkelling and swimming with fish, which I don’t have any photos of.
To wrap up this blog post, here’s a picture of a cat that was sitting somewhere in the Dole Plantation (pretty boring tourist trap, I wouldn’t bother going there for anything more than a quick stop).
