Volcanoes and waterfalls

Okay, I'm finally finishing up with blogging about Hawaii. The panoramic pictures are small on here, but if you click on them, you can see the larger version.

This was taken in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park--the Kilauea Crater. Pretty amazing.


This is the Thurston Lava Tube- a huge cave made from the lava flow.


The steam vents in the park were cool. It was raining pretty hard and we got soaked to get this picture, but it was fun!!

A panoramic of Punulu'u beach.

The forest where we went ziplining.

Spencer Beach. My family went to Hawaii years ago while I was on my mission and this is the beach they camped on. This beach was actually closed to swimmers because of jellyfish. I saw 3 little jellyfish when we were out snorkling and I hightailed it out of the water. We met a lady who looked like she had chicken pox all over her legs because she had a run-in with the jellyfish. Yikes!

Rainbow Falls

Akaka Falls

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach

I just love turtles.

And sand on my toes.

And crashing waves.

And Richard. Most of all.

The Kona Hawaii Temple

We had no idea that there was an LDS temple on the big island! As we were driving from the airport to our resort we saw this on the side of the highway!

It was dedicated 10 years ago! No wonder I don't remember an announcement of a second temple in Hawaii--I had only been off my mission for a year when it was announced. It felt so good to walk around the temple grounds and I fell in love with the orchids and other flowers:

Zipline

So our second day on vacation we went ziplining! I took this picture in the car on the way up the coast. A full rainbow where it reflected in the ocean. Who knew that all this time that the pot o' gold was underwater!

Our guides drove us in a Hummer on all these dirt roads back through a bunch of private property, farms, guava fields, and locked gates. You can't see a lot of this area of the island unless you are on a guided tour.

There were 8 different ziplines to go on. The longest being over 1000 feet.

This picture is a bit blurry because I took it as I was zipping by. So fun!

The suspension bridge was really cool too :)

Holua Resort

This is the Holua Resort at Mauna Loa Village. We had a beautiful 1 bedroom condo with the likes of the following views around us:


Okay, this last one might not be so pretty, but the photo sure came out nice ;)

Scuba Diving and Manta Rays

Our first day in Hawaii we went scuba diving with Jack's Dive Locker. (Good company. I would recommend them.) I hadn't been scuba diving in about 7 years and Richard's first dive was a couple years ago. I had forgotten how seasick I get on a boat!

We hit some ginormous waves and I wasn't as excited to be there anymore. But the ocean is beautiful. The dolphins swam along side our boat and on our first dive we saw a manta ray swim by, fish, coral, helmet shells, garden eels, and other creepy looking eels.

I know I look extremely scary in this picture. I was feeling a little tense. But I put it up here anyway to prove that I was really diving.

The second dive was in the evening after dark. They put a some lights on the ocean floor to attract plankton. Then the Manta Rays would come feed on the plankton. Seven Rays came for dinner.
These animals are HUGE. The bigger ones had a wingspan of 10 feet--they can get up to 20 feet! Their mouths are 2 feet wide and they do somersaults in the water to catch the plankton.


One of our guides, Keller, is a manta ray expert. He knows them all by name (60 of them altogether). They have these distinctive dots on their bellies and that's how he tells them apart. Now I must admit I didn't go on this dive. Richard was there 50 feet underwater taking these pictures. My nauseous self was floating on top--snorkling while they were feeding. So majestic. I wish I had gotten pictures from my view too.