We woke up early Tuesday morning & got a rental car so we could explore the island for a few days. We flew into Kona & were staying on the west side of the island, which are where most of the beaches and resorts are. The active volcano is on the east side of the island. We were told it would take a full day to make the drive over there (if we made a few stops along the way) but the girls weren't really excited about it, so Bryan surprised us & booked a helicopter instead:
We went with the company our hotel concierge recommended & we booked the full island tour, which was about 2 hours long. We had the first flight in the morning at 8:00 am:
Bryan & I have flown on a helicopter once, but that was early in our marriage before kids when we were in Alaska, so it kind of felt like a first for all of us & we were all a little nervous. We lucked out & had the flight to ourselves so they weighed us & sat us strategically:
Sophie & I lucked out & got to be up front with the pilot so I got the best shot for pictures & videos:
We flew over to the east side of the island immediately to see Kilauea, which is the largest active volcano. In fact, it erupted twice while we were there. Unfortunately, we never saw fresh lava spewing, just the steam & leftover lava that had already hardened. Fun fact, Kilauea is about 2 miles long & 1 mile wide:
There are actually 5 volcanos on this island & it is pretty neat from the air to see all of the lava patterns where they once flowed:
When we left that area, we headed west again & got up higher. The clouds were absolutely beautiful! I asked how high we went & he said average was about 10,000 ft and we were traveling between 100 - 120 mph:
We ended up on the west side again seeing the shoreline where all of the resorts & beaches are. This part of the island is drier, but the water is so pretty with its various shades of blue:
To be honest, I didn't think this part of the helicopter was scary at all. It felt like we were moving slow, not a lot of turbulence & we weren't too close to any mountains, however you could see a line of clouds & the winds shifting so after an hour in the area, our pilot said it wasn't safe to go farther north like we had planned. We were pretty bummed, but we would rather not experience the turbulence & get back safe, so we turned around & cut our flight short. Obviously we still had a great time & loved getting to see the volcano without having to drive to it:
This was our pilot, Matt, and he was wonderful! He said we could either come back later to try the rest of our flight or get part of our flight refunded:
While we were out, we were ready to explore so they recommended we drive farther north to see the lusher part of the island where the green & the waterfalls are since we didn't get to see it from the helicopter. We ended up driving to Pololu, which has a lookout point with a hiking trail down to a black sand beach in the Pololu valley. It was beautiful & more of what I think of in Hawaii, compared to what we had seen so far:
It was a pretty steep trail with a lot of switchbacks, but we finally made it to the black sand beach:
Farther back in the valley was another body of water but I told the girls not to touch it because it was so green, it looked like slime!
Surprisingly, the girls were troopers on the way back up. It helps that the view was so incredible:
After we drove around the north side of the island for a bit, we came back down to the west side & ended up at Queen's Marketplace which is a touristy area in Waikoloa. It was a great little area with restaurants & shopping, so we had an early dinner & had fun shopping. But our favorite discovery was:
We literally waited in line for 50 minutes for shaved ice but it was worth it:
We checked in with Blue Hawaiian several times & they never had any more flights go out that day because of the winds so we scheduled a flight for the next day. This time, instead of a 2-hour flight, it was a 1-hour flight to the north side of the island, which is what we drove the day before, but we didn't get to see views like this:
Unfortunately, this time we had to go with another couple, so they sat up front & the four of us at together in the back:
We saw a lot of waterfalls & he kept naming each one after the girls:
We told him we hiked Pololu Valley, so he flew us through there:
I am so glad we went back & finished the rest of our flight & I am so glad the weather was so perfect because it was beautiful! However, I will admit that this part of the flight made me a little more anxious. It wasn't really turbulence but flying down into the canyons & valleys surrounded by the mountains made me a little nervous!
While we were out, we decided to drive south to Kona. That is where the airport is we flew into & also where cruise boats come in, so I had heard there was a lot of good restaurants & shopping in that area also. We stopped at Magic's Beach Grill, which was a great dive restaurant right on the water. A friend had recommended it & we loved the atmosphere here!
It is right on a public beach with some really good waves so it was fun watching everyone in the water:
This is Kona & we had a great time walking around that night. In fact, we bought a few souvenirs, got more shaved ice & watched a lot of sand volleyball until sunset:
Another perfect ending to another perfect day!
