Elly Extravangaza, Hamakua Coast

After our adventures in Volcano, Elly and I continued around the island to the east shore and came to Hilo. Years ago it was a fishing town, but that is now a distant memory and it has become one of the most beautiful cities on the island. Unlike the Kona side, there aren't many sandy beaches so the tourism here hasn't taken off and it's much more lived-in by the locals. It's also home to the most gorgeous bay I have ever seen. Big and very sheltered from the ocean, the whole town forms a ring around the bay. Elly and I stopped by the farmer's market for some lunch snacks and sat at the Lili'uokalani Park enjoying our lau lau and tasty fruits.

Of course we had to make our foodie stops along the way. On the road we found the Hilo Brewing Company where we got a tour of the roasting room and a little education in the various stages of roasting and flavoring coffee. And we got to try a bunch of different samples of that gorgeous Kona coffee. Then we came across the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory and it was heavenly. The driveway is a few miles of macnut orchards and at the end is a tasting room with all sorts of nutty delights: chocolate covered, Maui onion and sour cream, wasabi, garlic. Hmm, hmm! They had a little automated factory tour hosted by a dancing, singing macnut with buttons where you could pick the language...Japanese was the best.

We also had some supplies to fetch. Specifically, Elly needed a machete for the bounty of tropical fruits perpetually begging to picked on the roadside. Now, in case you haven't picked up on it yet, dear reader, Hawaii is an unusual place. Where do you suppose that we went for this deadly implement? WalMart of course. Not only did they have a machete, they had multiple varieties, and we found one for only $5. Seems its a common garden tool around here, not a weapon for Rambo wannabes. Elly was delighted and took to chopping just about anything she could get her hands on, including her first banana tree, a sugar cane. and any random snack foods that needed cutting. And that was just the first day.

We spent the better part of our first afternoon in Hilo trying to find lodgings. We did not plan ahead, and so ended up driving around looking at many an incarnation of the "shitty-and-overpriced-hostel." We even found this creepy old bed and breakfast that was clearly haunted by Miss America 1941 whose pictures were everywhere about the house; the Victorian furniture, lack of lodgers and way-too-quiet aura made us realize that, though fascinating, we definitely did not want to sleep there. But all the searching was well worth it when we found The Inn at Kulaniapia Falls. We got a screaming deal and it was by far the loveliest place we had found so far. And, get this, we had our own private waterfall just steps from our room. The hosts were super gracious, the breakfast was phenomenal and we began our morning there with quick walk down to the 150 foot waterfall and a leisurely swim in the gorgeous pond. It was surrounded by vines, big tall trees and the mist of the falling water. I wanted to live there forever.

The drive from Hilo back to Hawi on the north end of the island was along the Hamakua coast. We had heard that this was the most beautiful drive on the island and we were not disappointed. We drove past deep gulches and tall waterfalls, through gorgeous old banyan groves and eventually wound our way back up through Waimea. On the north side of the island, Waimea is cattle country with soft grassy hills and big wide views of the sun setting over the ocean. We could even see Maui in the distance across the smooth water. The diversity of the island is amazing, from the rocky lavascapes of Kona, to active volcano on the south end, over to the green, lush Hilo side and back up to the pastureland on the north end. We did a tour of the whole coastline in a few days and it was spectacular.