Part II
Hey Guys! Thanks for checking back in with us 🙂 As promised today we are going to share the rest of our journey with you and show you some more beautiful photos! If you haven’t checked out Part 1 of our trip, you can click here and read all about it. Again this post is SUPER long so if you just wanna skim through and read or check out the pics below feel free! Alrighty now where was I…..
On our 8th day on the Big Island and the first full day since we moved condos to the Kona area, we chose to visit the Waimea area and the coastline on the northern part of the island. Scott had been wanting to go see the famous Waipio Valley lookout and was curious about what that whole area looked like, so we headed to Waimea, driving north where a lot of the land turns to ranches and farms. We drove through the town and the rolling hills and grassland and were getting closer and closer to the northern coast. Eventually, we reached the highway that lead us up the coast, and provided amazing views of this part of the island. One area that we fell in love with was a thick forest of trees that seemed to stand out from the rest of the landscape around it. We stopped to take pictures, explore, and take some drone shots, and while Scott was flying his drone through a path between the trees, the drone hit a branch and plummeted down to the ground. Scott ran to it and made sure no damages were inflicted on the drone, and thankfully everything was fine. We continued on the road until we got to the Waipio viewpoint that we were looking for. It was a very beautiful spot where you could see vast coastlines and plummeting drops from the cliffs edges. Scott had read that the valley below, Waipio Valley, was the largest valley on the island and it stayed extremely isolated due to the steep road and hike required to get down to it. After taking in the view for a while, we wanted to see more of the Waimea area, so we drove back towards the way we came and looked around for places to take more pictures and videos. We found a road, called Mana Road that lead us deep into the open grassland where many horses and cows were grazing the fields. We found a cool area on the road to pull over and shoot some cool stuff with all of our cameras. After our photo spree, we still had some time to kill before heading back, so we thought we would go chill at a beach until sundown. Scott picked a state beach that was on the way back to Kona called Hapuna Beach. We didn’t know how nice this beach was until we stepped on the sand. The sand was white and felt like soft powder on our feet, it was so nice. We put our towels down and jumped in the water and it was so amazing! The water was super clear, perfect temperature and the waves were nice and easy. We had such a relaxing time swimming in the water it was like I was at a spa. It was one those moments when everything feels so perfect and meant to be, I was so happy to be there with Scott. We laid out in the sun for a little after our swim and then started to get hungry. We packed up our stuff and headed back to the car. It wasn’t too long of a drive back to Kona where I cooked dinner for us and had a relaxing evening watching The Office together.
We woke up the next morning to check out the shopping center in Kona which was about a mile down the road from our condo. It was basically like a busy street with shops and restaurants on each side, with crowds of people walking down it. The humidity that morning was brutal so our stroll turned into a sweaty situation really fast. It was getting hotter and hotter and we felt like we got a good grasp of what the city had to offer, so we made it back to our condo to cool off. I had been talking to my grandmother the day before and she kept telling me I had to visit Waikoloa because it SO beautiful there. So I took her word for it and Scott and I made that our destination for the day. Waikoloa is basically a strip of really nice hotels and resorts that are on the northern coastline, it seemed super expensive and nice. We wanted to check out a beach there, so we followed the signs thats read “shoreline access” and we finally made It to the sand covered area that had a trail to where the beach was. We started walking down the trail and noticed all these beautiful washed up white coral all over the trail. I couldn’t believe how many there were, it was beautiful. The trail went on for a while before we got to the actual beach, but unfortunately the beach had a lot of rocks and it was hard to swim around without getting scratched up. We enjoyed the sun and the resort beach chairs, it felt like we were at a 5 star resort area that we just happened to wander into. Scott was curious about all the coral we saw and did some research on why it was there and it turns out that it has a pretty sad backstory. To sum it up shortly, the reason there are mounds of white coral along the beaches in this area (SCOTT EXPLAIN TO CORAL SITUATION)…The clouds started to roll in so we decided to make our way back to the car and get ready for dinner. We wanted to eat out in Kona and see how the nightlife was. We ate at a restaurant called Fish Hopper and enjoyed some yummy food and drinks.
Woke up the next day a little later than usually, and mapped out our outing for the day and evening. We had in mind stargazing on top of Mauna Kea for the night and then something active during the day. We decided to check out Pololuu Valley because we found out there was a short hike that lead down to the water. So we left Kona and headed to Pololu Valley which is as far north as it gets on the island. Once we arrived our view was another great lookout of the northern coastline. At the end of the road was the beginning of the trail head which went straight down. It was about .5miles going down as we hiked down I noticed a lot of people struggling with the hike back up, I wasn’t looking forward to it that much lol Once we got to the bottom there was a big beach to our left and a giant green valley to our right. Scott and I tried to explore as much as we could on the valley side but it got super muddy because of a river that was flowing through it. We made our way towards the beach and explored the thick forest area that ran along the beach side. It felt like it was very tribal hawaiian, like it looked very much like where settlers had lived long ago. We stayed down on the valley floor for awhile then made it back to our hike back up. It wasn’t THAT bad hiking back up like I expected. After returning to our car we headed back to the condo to change into warmer clothes for our stargazing/star photography night. Back at the condo we changed and I made a to go dinner so we could eat it later that night while we were looking up at the stars. The drive to Mauna Kea wasn’t too far from our condo but going up the mountain took time, since our rental car didn’t have 4 wheel drive we couldn’t go past the Visitors Center to the top of the mountain. Even thought we couldn’t get to the highest point we had an amazing view of the sunset and we had got there just in time to capture it on video. We hiked up a hill to where we would stay for the next 2 hours, I of course was freezing the whole time 😉 After it got dark we took some pictures on top of the hill fro a little bit before making our way down to the parking lot to set up an area closer to the car for me to get warm and Scott to take more photos. Once we got in the warm car we ate the pasta I made and it was AMAZING after being in the cold for 2 hours (Scott is laughing at me cause he says I’m a baby with cold weather lol) We stay for another hour or so, so Scott could take the shots he wanted and the photos he took did turn out very nice. Once he was satisfied we hit the road back to Kona.
The next day we were totally wiped out from the day before so we stayed in Kona for the whole day. We went to the shopping center to get some souvenirs for our family members then went to a beach that was super close to where the condo was. Very easy day just enjoying our last few days in Hawaii. That night we decided to wake up early the next morning to watch the sunrise from the Pololou lookout that we had been to the previous day, that meant waking up at like 4am to get there in time. Now I don’t know why but that was the night we decided to get drunk. Not a good idea when you have a 4am wake up call.
We had woken up feeling very groggy from the night before, too much vodka, but we were up! I wasn’t feeling too good at ALL. I knew I had no choice but to go so I pulled it together and got in the car while Scott drove to Pololou Valley. Now Im not gonna lie but we had to pullover a few times before making it to the top of the mountain, something about long curvy roads and a nauseous hungover girl just don’t mix. Once we had made it to the top Scott set up his tripod for a time-lapse of sun coming out over the clouds, unfortunately it was a little cloudier than we had hoped but Scott still got great footage from the sunrise. After the sunrise we decided to look for a cafe for breakfast because I still wasn’t feeling so good and needed something in my system. We drove into a town called Kapaau where we ate at Kings View Cafe, it was just what I needed. As we drove to the cafe I noticed lots of really cool areas that would be good for photography so after eating we drove back a little and stopped at various spots on the road. It was super green and lush in this area and it was just overall beautiful. After we got our shots we took an inland road back towards Kona. We chose this route because instead of taking the coastal route, which we had before, the inland road would take us across the mountain we had driven around in the morning. These mountains make up the small Kohala mountain range on the Northern peninsula of the island, and driving over them gave an incredible view of the island below and the vastly different landscape on the top of the mountain. We got back to the condo and had dinner and spend the night watching the office once again.
Waking up on our last full day on the island was so sad. We really didn’t want to leave at ALL. Hawaii had been such a treat for us and gave us so much inspiration to keep working and doing what we love. Since it was our last day to do stuff there was a few photos ideas I wanted to accomplish before our trip ended that being posing with a coconut 😉 We went to a farmers market in the city and bought a coconut with a straw poking out of it so I could take my coconut pictures. While we were in the city area we met up with a friend that was coincidently staying in Waiakiol so we talked about our excursions and what we had been up too. After visiting our friend we decided we had to go to the beach one last time before we left the next day. We stayed at the same beach the was super close from earlier in the week. We swam and laid out for a little but then the rain started so we headed back to the car. The night before we left we took a look at all the pictures and videos we had taken and were really happy with our trip. We got to go everywhere we had wanted to visit and felt we got a pretty good grasp on what the island was all about. We went to bed a little sad but were also so happy and fortunelt we got to go.
Our checkout was 11am again and I really wanted to see if we could request a later one because our flight didnt leave till 3pm and we were super close to the airport. Unfortunelty it was a $25 fee to request a early checkout, no thanks! We packed all out stuff, through away leftover food and packed the car up. We had some time to kill so we checked out a random area we were driving by. We saw some baby goats there and walked down toward the shoreline. It was a nice time to just say goodbye to the beauty of Hawaii before heading to the airport. We got to the rent a car place and returned the car successfully and headed to our flight. The outdoor airport wasn’t helping with the humidity outside but we survived and waited for our flight. We boarded the plane and watches as we flew away out into the pacific ocean. The last 2 weeks had been a world win. This trip was different from the rest because we knew we were making content that was going to go on our blog. We were so excited to start our blog and share all our content with the world. This trip kinda make it clear to us that this is what we love doing. Traveling and taking pictures and videos is so natural and fun us. We hope we can keep up this momentum and keep creating awesome videos for people to watch. These last two posts have been very long so if you made it to the end CONGRATULATIONS! You did it! Thank you so much for reading about our adventures and we hope that one day you can travel to all the places you want to see, anything is possible if you have the courage to pursue it.
