Big Island Days 1 and 2

Aloha from Hawaii! I always feel like I never have anything really cool to put on my blog so I think I’m going to blog in a somewhat detailed manner about my trip to Hawaii, mainly because I have so many beautiful pictures and also because I really want to remember this trip so that when I come back I can do all this fun stuff again!

I’ve been to HI once before but I only went to Oahu. Brad and I have always wanted to go back to HI and especially to the other islands because we had heard so much about them.



The reason we went to the Big Island is because our friend Robin grew up there and lives there now. Robin went to grad school with Brad so that's how we met him. He recently invited us there and we decided to take him up on his gracious offer.

Robin, Kali'i and their sweet daughter Kalia

As soon as we arrived we went to eat some traditional Hawaiian food of pork teriyaki and rice. I don’t have a picture, but it mainly looks like Chinese food.

From there we went to a beach called Pololu Beach where we had to hike down a huge mountain and at the bottom was a beautiful black sand beach.

Before the hike - you can't even see the beach yet:

 About half-way down we got our first glimpse of the beach:

From the beach I took a pic of the mountain because I saw these people standing where I had stood to take the pictures of the beach. I thought it really helped capture how steep the hike was - especially because you can't even see the bottom of the mountain!

We finally made it! 

 Understandably, the beach wasn't that crowded but there was a group of naked hippies that was interesting. I was so shocked I didn't think to take a picture, but they were sitting far away so after my initial surprise wore off they faded from my mind. The beach was pretty distracting!

That night we went to what was called a “graduation party” but was the equivalent to a luau without the Polynesian dancers. We had traditional Hawaiian food and some other stuff that is offered at the luaus you have to pay to go to. Score for us! Free luau – whoo-hoo! The only problem was at this point Brad and I had had very little sleep the previous two nights and we were extremely jet-lagged. We were both falling asleep sitting upright at about 9pm local time so we left soon after and I barely remember the drive home and collapsing in bed.

The next day we went to church with our friends and then we headed over to Hapuna Beach. This beach was extremely crowded because there was no hike and also because it was right next to a nice resort.

There were a lot of people jumping off this rock, but shortly after I saw an official-looking truck come by and the rock cleared out. It looked extremely dangerous so I wasn't that surprised. 

Day 3 of the Big Island needs a whole blog entry as we took a driving tour of the whole island!