Life in Hawaii

This year was Gregg's and mine 5 year anniversary and we had been planning to go somewhere to celebrate. A month before we wanted to leave we decided to look at prices again to Hawaii. To our surprise they had dropped $1000 from the last time we had looked. We knew that was where we wanted to go. And we decided to go to Hawaii (The Big Island). We stayed at the Marriott in Waikoloa, which is about 25 miles north of Kona. It was such a great hotel, you never go wrong with the Marriott. We flew into Hawaii on a Wednesday and got there around 5:00 Hawaii time which is really 9:00 Utah time. We were exhausted. When you get off the plane its not in a terminal, you have to actually climb down the stairs onto the tarmac. And the airport were made of these little huts. It was a tiny place. I thought I only saw one baggage carousel. We rented a little Nissan Versa to cruise around in. Here is what we did the rest of the time!

On Thursday we hadn't signed up for any excursions so we decided to drive into Kona and look around and see what we were going to do. We just walked along the shops and went to a farmers market that day. We bought our girls some cute flip flops and bracelets that day. Also a super cute Hula doll from Target. We were driving around and turned on this random street and it led us straight to the temple which is on a dead end. It was such a pretty sight. Although the temple is tiny! We also went shopping to get us groceries to take back to our hotel. We had decided we'd buy breakfasts and lunches to make at our hotel and then go out to dinner every night.

On Friday we spent the morning at the beach. Some other tourists we had talked to said that there was some way awesome snorkeling right off the hotels beach. So instead of spending money on a snorkeling excursion we decided to try out the beach first instead. It did not disappoint. There were corral right off with tons of fish and sea turtles. I have been to the carribbean before and I love the oceans there because they are such a pretty blue. I was expecting Hawaii's water to look like California's and not be as pretty but much to my surprise it was much bluer than I thought and I was so glad. This was the day that Gregg got a major sunburn. Lobster red. We got a good laugh out of it!

On Saturday we drove over to Hilo. It is about 2.5 hours away from Kona. Kona is really dry and not as lush and green as the other islands but driving over to Hilo it was so green. It sometimes felt like we were driving under a bridge of trees because they would lapse over eachother. One of the locals was telling us it rains only like 10 inches a year on Kona but over in Hilo it rains like 200 inches a year. No wonder it is so green. We went and saw Akaka falls and also drove to see the volcano. It is SO windy up by the volcano. The trade winds are on that side of the island and blow the ocean against that hot lava and it makes the precipitation that causes rainfall. We also walked through this lava tunnel. It almost is like a cave but its made from lava.

On Sunday night we attended a luau at our hotel. It was really fun to see hula dancing in real life and how they dance to their story lines. They also had a fire dancer at the end and that was crazy and really neat to see. The food was pretty good as well :)!

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On Monday we drove up to a place called Hawi and went on a zip lining excursion. We had such a fun time doing this. I had never been and Gregg had only been on a small one at boy scouts. There were 8 different zip lines that we did. They started off pretty small and then got bigger. After a couple of them we had to learn how to run in when we reached the other side. The last zip line we did was super long and it went EXTREMELY fast. We had such a great time.

Gregg thought this old VW Van was pretty cool. We saw quite a few of these and they were all redone fancy like this one.

Tuesday was our last day :(! Our flight didn't leave until 9:00 PM and so we had all day to hang around. We got up really early to go to the temple but they don't rent temple clothing so we weren't able to go. Since we were up so early we got down to the beach around 8:00. We looked out and could see rowers practicing about 500-1000 ft. from our beach and they were stopped and looking at something. I squinted my eyes and could see fins and I screamed to Gregg "Oh my gosh, those are dolphins." I LOVE DOLPHINS and had been wanting to see some. Well at our beach you could go and rent little two man canoes for $15 so Gregg went and rented us one and we paddled out to them. There were seriously 20+ dolphins swimming all around us and underneath us and jumping out of the water. AMAZING. I did not have my camera and yes I was bummed but I didn't want to risk not seeing them just to go back to the hotel to get the camera. I told Gregg we just got to swim with dolphins for $15. What a deal :)!

We had such a great time in Hawaii! It was worth every penny spent. I'd do it all over again just to be alone with Gregg again!