Water all round!

Today was reasonably sunny, which I'm told is a rare occurrence in this part of the world. Our plan was to visit a couple of waterfalls in the morning. Waterfalls are one of the benefits of being in one of the wettest places on the planet - spectacular formations are everywhere!

First up was Akaka Falls State Park. The star attraction of a short round-trip walk, Akaka Falls is a massive waterfall. The rest of the walk is pretty nice as well, with several really nice stops for mini-waterfalls, moss-covered tree trunks and massive banyan trees:

Akaka Falls State Park

Next up was Rainbow Falls. It does what it says on the tin: depending on the angle of the sun, a rainbow is thrown up by the water tumbling into the river underneath the falls. While it wasn't quite at the right angle, there was a rainbow while we were there. Behind the lookout there's a massive collection of banyan trees where you can hide in the shade for a while, and go further out onto the rocks above the falls:

The fantastic Rainbow Falls

Got back and chilled for a while, before deciding the day was not yet over and heading out again. We headed for a couple of beach parks, but ran away pretty quickly as there was not much to either of them. I then amused myself walking around first Coconut Island, a small outlook island jutting into the bay:

Coconut Island: an accurate description

And then Liliuokalani Gardens, a large Japanese garden in the middle of the town, with some nice bridges and shady places to sit back and watch the world go by:

The picturesque Liliuokalani Gardens

So a pretty full day, all things considered! Tomorrow if the weather holds up we will head off to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the other must-do day trip from Hilo. Until then!

Felicity says:

We were indeed lucky with the weather, the only other time I have been here it was unpleasantly damp. I only yelled at him once to get a move on and stop taking so many photos of the same thing. I thought I was very patient really. Mainly because the $5 entry fee only gave us 2 hours of parking at the Akaka Falls area and we just made it back to the car in time - and we were lucky we went early because on our return we found that people had had to park a long way up the road and walk in.