Now that we have begun to plan our next vacation to Hawaii, I think it's time that I blogged about our last trip.
Last October, we went to the Big Island again and stayed at the same resort as last time. We decided to invite James' parents along for some tropical air.
This is a little area over looking the lagoon that is full of fish, sharks, and sea turtles.
We went ziplining again, but through a different area of the island. As always, we had a blast!
Here's a video that I took while ziplining. Sorry for the poor quality...and the scream. I'm not a fan of heights!
We swam alongside a few sea turtles. It was an amazing, calm experience.
My parents had told us about a great boogie boarding beach called Hapuna. We decided to go there one day. When we got there, there were absolutely no waves so we snorkeled for hours instead. I ventured pretty far out following an octopus that eventually sprayed ink at me and swam off.
The next day, we decided to drive around the island. As we passed what we thought was Hapuna beach, we realized that we had turned down the wrong road. Hapuna beach was actually on the other side of the rocks in the picture above. We eventually went back to the right beach. It was a very good beach for boogie boarding, but the waves were big and randomly, really big waves would come in. The video below was taken moments before my inlaws were hit from behing by a huge wave and thrown around. This is also the last picture of my mother-in-law's glasses. Someone will find them across the world one day.
The boys went on a helicopter ride over the island while the girls shopped our way through Kona.
We went up to Kilauea (the active volcano) and looked over the crater and walked through a lava tube.
There were two things that I wanted to do on this trip. The first was to hike to the green sand beach. There are only two green sand beaches in the world and I thought it would be a great experience to see it. I had no idea what we would have to go through to get there. The beach is on the southern most tip of the Island. There are no roads or trails that take you there. It is either a 3 mile hike over rough lava fields in the middle of nowhere or a 30 minute drive with a crazy, local, off roading, Hawaiian. We opted for the drive. I'm not sure that I'd ever do it again, but I am glad I did this time.
It was an absolutely beautiful beach.
The next two pictures are of some of the beauty at our resort. Waikoloa Village is carved into lava rock. All the colors stand out next to the black rock. I thought this tree looked amazing growing out of the rocks.
The second thing that I wanted to do on the island was to swim with the Manta Rays. I will probably never do this again! It was an awesome adventure, but a little too creepy for me.
We loaded the boat in the afternoon and then as soon as it got dark, we jumped into the ocean (far enough out that we couldn't see any buildings). We held on to floating lights and waited for the Manta Rays to come. We had two 10 footers swim with us. They feed off of the plankton near the lights, which we were holding on to. They came within inches of us.
James was holding on at the outer edge of the light. We had been told that sharks do occasionally come around, but stay on the outer edges. This was probably the freakiest thing I have ever done.
We had a wonderful vacation, but how can you not when you are in Hawaii!
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