My coworkers and I made this distinction over lunch as we considered that some people love to relax on vacations; while others love to go explore / sightsee / generally be busy.
During our Big Island week, we wanted both. As such, we spent 4 days in Hilo, the East side of the Island with an abundance of nature to explore. Part 2 will be our visit to the Kona side, where we booked a fancy resort and will relax on a sandy beach.
Day 1: Travel and Travel
We left the PNW at 9am and arrived at noon Island Time in Kona (the West Side). We knew we had lots of driving in store, so we splurged on a convertible Mustang – a great choice during what turned out to be a mostly sunny and warm week.
Green Sand Beach: 7/10
We started off for Hilo along Highway 11, the route going along the South Side of the Big Island. We stopped at Green Sand Beach along the way, which turns out to be the southernmost point of the United States! We didn’t realize the beach was a 3 mile hike from the parking lot. There were locals that offered to drive you in jeeps along the trail, but we opted to hike – a regrettable decision when we were tired from traveling and hadn’t eaten in 6 hours. The beach itself was pretty jaw dropping with a secluded crater-like feel and steep entrance you needed to carefully descend. Word of warning though: the sand isn’t really as green as oversaturated photos would have you believe. Overall this could be a fun place to check out if it’s along your route, but frame it mentally as a hike with a cool destination.
Hawaiian Style Cafe: 7/10
We stopped at a local diner when we made it to Hilo, Hawaiian Style Cafe. Exhausted and famished, this food tasted amazing but in retrospect was pretty normal diner food. We got a “loco moco” style breakfast dish – eggs, rice, spam, Portuguese sausage, and brown gravy; reminded me of the breakfasts my mom used to cook!
Day 2: Volcanos!
Hilo Lunch Shop: 7/10
We started the day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at Hilo Lunch Shop. The thing about Hilo is not many tourists stay there, especially downtown, so we got to experience a crowd of locals picking up breakfast. We picked up our first spam musubi of the trip (cheap – only $1.15 each!), and there was a wide array of food options to build your ow bento box.
Hilo Farmer’s Market: 8/10
We made our way to the local farmer’s market – on Saturdays they have an extended vendor list with 200 vendors! There were tons of local fruit and many craft vendors. I got my favorite musubi of the trip here, and some really tasty fresh juice. There weren’t many hot food options here to our surprise though, and prices seemed fairly high compared to the local lunch shop we were just at.
Hawaii Volcano National Park: 10/10
We knew the national park would be a highlight of our trip, and it didn’t disappoint! The biggest thing to keep in mind with the HVNP is the sheer amount of things to see and do here. You need to pick your battles if you’re going to do this in a day. We used the Shaka Tour Guide app and would have been utterly lost without it – it uses GPS to guide you around the park and offer context, stories, legends; and most importantly, recommendations on what to skip, what to stop at as lookouts, and what to turn into full-blown hikes.
Here is our ranked list of hikes we did, not counting many casual lookouts that would make this too long to list! Also not mentioned is getting to see the active crater of the volcano, though sadly we came 3 months late to see flowing lava 😿
Thurston Lava Tube
Very high ROI to do a short hike through a dark tunnel of former lava!
Steam Vents
Underground lava hits water, causing steam to explode out of the ground – these are so cool to experience first hand and feels like standing next to a natural sauna.
Kilauea-Iki Crater Trail
This 4 mile-hike is an investment, but one of the coolest experiences on the island. You literally feel like you’re on the surface of a different planet, surrounded on all sides by barren crater walls.
Holei Sea Arch
Very cool to be feet away from high cliffs dropping straight into the ocean, with giant waves slamming the cliffs, exploding dozens of feet into the air.
Petroglyph Hike
It’s pretty interesting to see the inscribed glyphs from hundreds of years ago, but could be a pass since this a long hike at the end of your day.
Devastation Trail
This trail wraps the site of a previous eruption, and the mountain that is starting to grow back in its place (NatureIsHealing.jpeg). We don’t recommend doing the whole hike since there isn’t much to see; once you wrap the initial bend to see the mountain you’ve seen it all.
Overall, the HVNP is more than the sum of its parts – one small list cant do justice of all you experience and see even just driving through – in one day you can explore dozens of different biomes, lava fields, hikes, craters, lava tubes, ocean views, and more. If you like nature at all, this is a must-do.
Cafe Pesto: 8/10
Not much to say about this restaurant in downtown Hilo besides that we both really enjoyed our food here. I got a custom pizza with local pork and sausage, and my wife ordered a mushroom risotto. We also enjoyed a local “Guava Gingerade” and a macadamia apple crisp for dessert.
Day 3: Hilo Beaches
The Hilo side of the island is not known for its beaches, as it’s mostly lava-rocky beaches with not much sand. That said, there were a couple good snorkeling spots we wanted to go check and they were definitely worth the the 15 minute drive from downtown.
Ken’s Pancake House: 8/10
Fun local breakfast joint if you’re trying to carb up for the day. We ordered macadamia nut banana waffles, loaded with whip cream, maple syrup, coconut syrup, guava syrup, and pineapple syrup. Not typically my kind of breakfast, but when in Hawaii…
Carlsmith Beach: 9/10
This featured tide pools and rocky outcroppings to explore; and the lava rocks formed a natural barrier from the ocean to swim in calm and shallow water. Naturally there were a lot of local families and kids here. This made for incredibly easy and fun snorkeling – you could literally stand in waist-deep water, stick your head under the water and see a variety of small fish. We saw angel fish, small eels, and a ton of other fish I’m not qualified to name. The water was manageably chilly (I suspect due to being isolated from the ocean). After we left my wife said, “That’s the best snorkeling I’ve ever done!”
Richardson Beach: 10/10
But then after we left Richardson Beach, my wife said, “Never mind; THAT’S the best snorkeling I’ve ever done!”
Richardson beach was truly a highlight of the trip for us. We first explored local tidepools where we found a turtle! Apparently there are usually quite a few turtles, but even just seeing one up-close was amazing.
We then proceeded to snorkel and it was stunning – warm water, amazing fish as soon as you enter, big fish (including what looked like a multi-foot long eel, and an 18 inch parrot fish), massive sea urchins, and a huge variety of local fish and schools swimming all around us. Part of what made this even better than Carlsmith was the presence of a local coral reef that attracted more and bigger fish; also being more exposed to ocean made the water comfortably warm the entire time.
Pineapple’s Island Fresh Cuisine: 8/10
I loved the atmosphere and food here – surfer beach restaurant bar type vibe with good local eats and fun drinks out of pineapples.
Kula Shaved Ice: 8/10
A local shaved ice place in downtown hilo. Not much to say except really good. I got macademia nut ice cream covered in coconut shaved ice, topped with coconut shreds and chocolate shell sauce.
Hilo Burger Joint: 6/10
A burger dinner restaurant in downtown Hilo. It was just okay food; I could take this or leave it, but did the job in a pinch.
Day 4: Chasing Waterfalls
Sipping Sirens: 4/10
Local coffee shop with some breakfast pickups. Neither of us were big fans of the breakfast here – I ordered a spam breakfast bowl which was served premade, soggy and lukewarm. My wife ordered a breakfast bagel which she didn’t like at all.
Rainbow Falls: 10/10
Huge ROI on this waterfall just a few minutes outside of Hilo. Step out of your car for an amazing view of a waterfall
Boiling Pots: 6/10
From rainbow falls if you drive just a few more minutes away, you can see some river tidepools. During rainy season, they apparently look frothy like they’re boiling, but for us it was an uneventful stop, especially after the beautiful Rainbow falls.
Kaumana Caves: 10/10
A few more minutes deeper into Hilo, we stumbled upon Kaumana Caves, an unexpected highlight of the trip for me. This is a local lava tube, but unmaintained like the ones in the national park. Soon after entering, it becomes pitch black; the only lights are flashlights you may bring in. About a quarter mile in, the cave shrinks down to 3 feet high ceilings, which is where we stopped, though we saw a few brave tourists trek even further (funnily enough, usually guys telling their spouses or families “eh it’ll be okay”). This is a highlight for the sheer real experience you get with high ROI.
Onomea Trail: 9/10
Making our way further north along the coast, this short hike was right off the roadside and offered some of the coolest views we got to experience of the coast.
Botanical Gardens: 4/10
We heard cool things about this place, but for the price ($30 / person) we were kind of disappointed. Neither of us are huge plant folk, so seeing a variety of local flowers wasn’t that incredible to us. My highlight was meeting a cool gecko.
Umauma Experiences (ziplining): 6/10
My wife really wanted to go ziplining over waterfalls, and this place had some of the best reviews but we were pretty let down overall.
The zip-lining itself was awesome: the staff was cool and taught you how to do cool tricks like going upside down, spinning, front-flipping, etc. Not many zipline places offer you that kind of freedom!
The cons that knocked it down for us:
Pacing. They only had enough staff to man the current zipline the tour was doing (out of 9). So after every zip line we had to wait ~15 minutes before the next one. In contrast, we’ve ziplined places before (like Mexico) that had more staff that would be ready at the next zipline so you never stopped moving and they were always ready for you.
Views. There were like 2-3 ziplines out of 9 that had cool views or went over waterfalls; the rest were filler just going over empty grass fields, usually not even very high (a couple were 25 feet high!)
Pricing. At $250 / person, it was pretty expensive, especially considering the above factors.
“Cannonball”. They explained to us that since the weather was hot, it was likely for lighter people t get stuck, so my wife had to curl in and “cannonball” for 4 out of the 9 ziplines to help her maintain speed. This prevented her from being able to do cool tricks, and also was just pretty uncomfortable position overall.
Ola Brew: 10/10
This was some of our favorite food and drink in Hilo! There were a ton of local brews that we got to try out, and we ended up getting a flight of 8 local drinks including beer, novelty cider, a spiked Tulsi Berry Iced Tea (our favorite), and hard juice. We also had amazing food, including a smashed burger and a great steak.
Day 5: Travel to the Westin West Side
This time, we travelled along the north coast along the island to head back to Kona for the Westin Hapuna, where we’ll spend the last 3 nights of our trip.
Shaka Tour North Coast
We took the shaka guide up the north coast, and it was cool to learn more about the history of the island through the tour guide, but we didn’t take most of his recommendations on where to stop because we were tired and not feeling up to hike, see more waterfalls, or check out local swimming holes. Our favorite stop was Tex Drive In, where we got Portuguese Donuts called Malasadas, which was a highlight for my wife (she recommends the strawberry filling!)
Westin Hapuna
And with that, we conclude our “trip”, the active 4 days in the Hilo East side, and check in to a hopefully relaxing few days in the Westin Hapuna on a sandy beach. The only scheduled activities are a surf lesson, and a Luau. Mahalo, and Aloha!
