Snap Crackle & Pop

So without a doubt the most adventurous thing we have done this trip was learn to breath underwater. We woke up at 6:00am, and ate breakfast, and scurried down to the Kona harbor, where we boarded the Kona Diving boat — but it was the wrong vessel. We had to go to the opposite side of the horbour where our vessel was waiting. There was about 8 other divers plus the guides on the boat. The majority were certified divers so when we got to our diving spot they went off on their own. Our instructor lead four of us on the first dive, and three of us the second dive. Learning to breath under water is a whole new experience, where if you want to breath through your nose, you are quickly reminded that you can not. The first dive was hard on our ears, but the second was a lot better. The coral reef, and the amount of fish was unreal. Do a google search on coral reef, and tropical fish, and we saw them all. There is a wicked amount of fish, clams, and other critters down there, and is beautified by the clear blue water. Without a doubt it was an extreme experience that was unreal.

After our diving we went off into Kona coffee land and went to a couple of coffee farms, and the old coffee mill where the coffee museum was. We got to try peaberry Kona coffee which is the rarest of the rare type of coffee. We didn’t dare try to buy some as it was extremely expensive. We finished our day out of the resort at Hilo Hattie and picked up a bunch of souvenirs. We went back to the resort and went for a swim, and then had a bottle of wine and a BLT at the lounge where we were the only ones out in the back patio — A really relaxing setting.

We are now comming back from sun tanning and playing in the resort. We are sitting down eating pizza for lunch, then we will go back out and play some more.

Hang Loose!!!

Ian&Rebecca

Volcano Day!

Today was our visit to Volcano National Park on the south west end of the island. We took another drive across Saddle Road as the fastest route to that side of the island. The Kona end was much better in the daylight than in the dark of the night before. It’s still almost a two hour drive across the island, though. Volcano, the village just outside the park is about 30 miles from Hilo. The entire island is actually a series of 5 volcanoes, with the youngest and most active ones in the park. Kilauea is the currently active one, although only one of the remaining 4 are considered extinct. Mauna Kea is considered dormant since it hasn’t erupted in 4000 years but is expected to do so at some point in the future.

Kilauea Caldera is the main focus of the park. A caldera is any crater wider than 1 mile wide. Since it is an active volcano, parts of the park were closed due to high levels of sulfur dioxide. Despite that, we still had an amazing visit.

Halema’uma’u Crater is the part currently erupting and there’s a constant stream of sulfur dioxide and condensation from it.

We briefly visited steam vents and the park’s Jagger Museum before heading off on an absolutely amazing, challenging 2 hour Kilauea Iki hike. On the advice of a park ranger, we set off counterclockwise to be able to climb in less challenging switchbacks rather than a series of steep stairs. The view from the top alone was breathtaking.

After a gradual descent though the lush tropical forest, the trail enters onto the bottom of the Kilauea Caldera floor.

On the way down, it’s fun to watch people walk across the floor of the crater, which covers about half the loop, since it’s little tiny people on a huge black field. The trip back up, while we were glad we chose the easier way, was demanding. The theme for that portion of the trip was “don’t look up” since you then realized how much further you had to climb.

We rounded out the trail with a visit to the Thurston Lava Tubes, which is basically a huge hole in the ground surrounded by lava from volcanic eruptions. This part was definitely a tourist hot spot in the park.

In our quest to explore all of the island, we drove back on a beautiful scenic drive around the southern tip of the island back towards Kona. We never get tired of admiring the Pacific Ocean crash on the shores of the island’s amazing varied landscape.

Saturday Adventures

Yesterday was a very, very full day exploring the north end of the island.

Our first stop was Lapakahi State Historical Park.

The Park is an old fishing village on the western shores of the island with beautiful views over the ocean. It is a quaint little spot right off the highway.

This, however, was our main target for the morning:

This is Pololu Valley at the top western edge of the island at the end of Highway 270. The road ends at the lookout, with the view above.

These scary looking signs greet you at the top of the trail down

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

The trail down looked a bit scary too.

The trail down was a series of switchbacks, some on the edge of cliffs.

The views at the bottom were a reward in themselves.

The ocean and the valley were both beautiful. Something you don’t see everywhere though is the black sand beach

The surf was strong, discouraging swimming – Rebecca had to quickly step up at one point when the waves going out pulled out the sand out from underneath her feet! The trip down was definitely worth it and the hike was a bit of a challenge but still lots of fun.

Pololu Valley was only the first part of our journey though. From there, we drove down with beautiful views of cattle ranches into Kamuela or Waimea, where we had lunch, then continued across the north coast of the island toward Hilo, the other main city on the island.

We stopped at Akaka Falls State Park and took a short hike to see the falls.

Heading into Hilo, we stopped on the outskirts to see another recommended falls, Rainbow falls.

Rebecca’s hat is from Kona Brewing Company, where we ate lunch on Friday, which is a fantastic brewery on the island. The back says “Liquid Aloha”, which is their slogan.

Next stop was Kaumana Caves. We weren’t equipped to actually go in, since that required flashlights and long pants, but we did go down a set of very steep steps and look around a bit.

Hilo is called the City of Gardens. Two big tsunamis in the 1900s destroyed houses and buildings near the coast, so instead of rebuilding, the city has turned the coastal areas into gardens. We visited Lili’uokalani Gardens which was filled with lots of Asian inspired bridges, gazebos and statues. It was a nice quiet walk and seemed to be a popular wedding photo location.

Adjacent to the Garden is Coconut Island, which seemed to be a real hangout spot for locals. It was filled with birthday parties and BBQs, and people swimming, snorkeling and fishing around it’s edges.

Our route back to the resort took us along Saddle Road. Saddle Road is a bit infamous. It runs between the east and west coasts between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two large volcanoes on the island. Mauna Loa is the tallest mountain in the world when measured from the base, since most of it is under water. Mauna Kea is actually about 1000 feet taller, but it is a branch volcano from the side of Mauna Kea, so doesn’t count. Saddle Road was nicely paved at the Hilo end and there was evidence of ongoing road work to improve the pavement towards Kona. We took a detour up to the Mauna Kea Visitor Center

The clouds were quite low, so we drove through the clouds on our way up.

We weren’t able to drive up to the summit since our wimpy rental Cobalt doesn’t have the required 4WD. Both of us were missing our real car and it’s AWD.

On the drive back down we were rewarded again with beautiful views of the sunset through the clouds and mountains.

Catching up on pictures

Aloha!

We’ve been very busy for the past two days and are finally catching up on uploading pictures to Flickr and posting them here.

This is the view from our hotel room… at least one of the them. We’ve claimed this as “our” hammock to hang out on when we get a chance.

This is just one of the many amazing art pieces on the Museum Walkway at the resort that you can take from one end to the other.

Our feet on vacation… hanging out at the Kona pool. We took a break on our tour around the resort on the first day.

Friday morning our helicopter tour took us on a tour of the island. This is what our helicopter looked like.

And the view from inside the helicopter. There was great visibility to take tons of pictures and a video.

Today — Another Day in paradise!

Yep — Didn’t let Rebecca sleep in again.  Woke up around 6AM, while saying to Rebecca “I’m UP – Lets go for a swim” … So we did   … Then we headed quickly for breakfast (yummy), then straight to the Blue Hawaiian Helicopter tour which was amazing.  We have a lot of photos, video, and a DVD of the flight.  We will post that when we have more time later in our trip, but it was supper cool.  We saw a great deal of the island, although the weather wasn’t the greatest to see any lava, we did see some lava pour into the ocean which created a HUGE steam cloud.  We went and saw some waterfalls, and the all the different types of climates Hawaii has.

After our TOUR — We headed to KONA to the KONA BREWING COMPANY and had the BEST Hawaiian Pizza ever!!  and tried almost every beer on the menu through their samplers (tasty)  That summed up daily activities, because we had to get back to the Hotel to get ready for the luau which was super cool.

Rebecca and I got in our flower power wear — We both looked like super tourists, but when we got the luau we fit in like camouflage.  We sat down next to a really friendly couple and their two kids.  We had a lava flow and a pinacalada, then got up to a buffet type of dinner with lots to choose from.  We also took a look at the pit where they roasted the pig.  Before the show started we got our Kona coffee, and dessert, and watched the history of Hawaii through dance and song.  It was really fun — and afterwards, we laid down on a hammic near the ocean… Paradise.

Well thats all for now.  Photo’s will unfortunately have to wait.  We will post some tommorow.

HANG LOOSE!!

-Ian&Rebecca

We took a tour!

That’s pretty much the best way to describe what we did on our first day in Hawaii. Ian woke up early, thanks to the 6 hour time difference, and didn’t give Rebecca much choice about staying in bed. After a great breakfast, thanks to being on the Executive Floor, we set out to explore the resort. It’s huge! It took us close to four hours before we got back from our first tour of the resort, then got ready to have an amazing massage.  It was really relaxing and something everyone should do while they are here in Hawaii.  Afterwards we had lunch at the Lagoon Grill next to the dolphins, then headed out to the shops in the village.  We found a general store that had booze, so Ian and I stocked up … After a swim, we got ready for dinner, and found this lounge, where we sat outside in these confy chairs, and fire blombs, and had a BLT, Ceasar Salad, 3 drinks = 71$ … but it was worth it   We completed our day with a walk along the museum walkway back to our room …

What day are we now? Departure Gate BINGO!

Yep — We are now officially confused.  We woke up at 4am for the second time in a week to travel from one side of the US to the complete opposite.  It has been relatively fast getting here to LAX as it is 3:45.  So 13 hours aight bad … oh wait .. the time zone difference, yes 16hrs … and another 5 hour flight to go.  It was fun though waiting in Dallas.  What a clean, and modern airport.  THEY HAVE IPOD NANO’S IN A VENDING MACHINE!!! …. but they also know how to play old school games such as Depature Gate BINGO.  Yep.  We got shuffled not once, not twice, but three times.  Anyway — We had to get a day pass from T-MOBILE in order to download a video codec to watch all of our shows, so we thought we would update our blog.

Here is Rebecca …. Quite the day but definitely an adventure. For me, lots of new things – I had never been to Texas, which wasn’t as much of a culture shock as I feared, or California before. Landing in Dallas looked a lot like coming into land in Saskatoon- seeing the land split into a grid. It was a bit greener though. Our flights have been relatively on time, although our 2 3 hour layovers ensured that any delays wouldn’t be a problem. One more long flight to go, a bit of a drive and then we’ll finally be at our final destination! After 22 hours and 5 time zones since we got up and I will be looking forward to bed.

Pictures from yesterday

I was having trouble with Flickr last night but I got the pictures uploaded this morning.

Day 2 & 3: Another day in paradise… more to come

Like Ian said yesterday, not a lot of consistency here

Yesterday we sent Dad off to Colorado for the week. We miss him, since this is the first time Rebecca’s been in Florida without both of them here. But, we’ve been continuing on with our adventures. While at the airport, we managed to get our luggage swapped out for brand new luggage.  ~sweet.

Shopping at Sawgrass Mall is always one of our favorite adventures while in Florida. We typically start off at Bed, Bath and Beyond, checking out all the housewares, kitchen gadgets and other assorted stuff. We compared prices on our wedding china and towels. The difference between there and the Bay is shocking! Rebecca was surprised by all the pharmaceutical products available in the store! Things that need a prescription in Canada are available with no pharmacist in sight.

Rebecca loves shopping in Florida, although as usual, Ian managed to regenerate his wardrobe in short order. After a long trip in the mall including a great lunch break at Legal Seafoods, we headed home and relaxed with some Chinese food and a walk with Buster to round out the evening.

Monday morning we headed to the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Like the title says, another day in paradise. It was beautifully sunny and both us enjoyed the water and numerous sunscreen applications. We loved being able to relax on the beach on a Monday instead of being at work or school. We got some good shots of the scenery and each other but Flickr is refusing to upload them to include.

Despite spending half the afternoon in the ocean, us and Mom enjoyed a swim in the pool after we got home. Buster was so jealous of the fun we were having that he jumped in to swim with us and him and Ian played for a bit.

This is hard work — but someone has to do it

Until Next Time

-Ian&Rebecca

Day 1 — Don’t expect consistency here :)

Hello everyone. Day 1 of our honeymoon has been quite the adventure – To say the least. We flew out early in the morning, and if you take a look at our photos later on you will see some amazing shots of New York city.

This is us before leaving Toronto very early in the morning

On our way into land at LaGuardia Airport, we managed to get some great shots of the city.

Ian got a great shot over the water

And an even better one of the Empire State Building

Rebecca snapped a couple of good views of the Statue of Liberty, which was much smaller than either of us expected.

Our fun flying experience ended there. From NY to Miami, we spent 1hr on the tarmac, and then when we arrived in Miami our luggage was badly damaged. Thank goodness we do not have to fly for a little while. Anyway — We are having fun here in Florida. We had a good time playing at the casino, where Rebecca managed to win $100 on slots, more than making up for Ian’s losses at poker and have been enjoying the company our Mom&Dad Hickman

Here’s a couple of shots of paradise

The pool where we’ve been swimming

And some of the beautiful garden

Bye for now

-Ian&Rebecca

PS – We’ve been uploading pictures here