We made it to the dry side!

We are now in Kailua-Kona for the next week, or best part thereof. Here on the 'dry' side of the island, the leeward side on the other side of the mountain range, and therefore immune to rain. Mostly! It seems like in Hawaii though, most of the rain just hangs about up in the mountains in the middle, and the coast is mostly sunny!

The day started off with a short visit to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. That turned into a long visit... nearly 3 hours later we trekked off! There was a whole bunch of stuff to see though. Plants. And waterfalls. And ocean views. And... well you get the general idea:

Plant-free photos from the gardens

Of course there is a range of plants, from those that (apparently) we have at our garden at home, to wacky plants that looked more like Transformers:

Plants from the gardens

And what's a botanical garden without a parrot cage?

Complete with parrot cage!

After dragging ourselves back up the long hill and into the car, we gratefully turned the AC dial up and headed towards Waipio Valley Lookout. A rather well-known spot, judging from the distance the car had to be parked from the lookout. A short walk from the car park takes you to the lookout, where you can hike down to the beach and nearby waterfall:

Waipio Valley Lookout

Declining the hike because (a) not enough time and (b) can't be arsed, we headed past a couple of towns on our way towards Kona. First up was Honoka'a, the closest town to the lookout:

Honoka'a old town

To Waimea, a spread-out, nice town in the mountains, where we had a Starbucks stop for refreshment and wifi - the busiest Starbucks we've seen so far and the staff were almost a blur they were working so fast - very impressive!

Waimea

Fast-forward nearly an hour, to Kona where the sun was just starting to set. Cue a few lightning-fast photos out of the car window of the sunset:

Sunset from the car window

Not that the 25mph speed limit was any barrier to taking photos. The speed limits here are just weird in some places.

So next few days will combine some time to chill out, ready for Kauai, with some must-see attractions that will take up the rest of the time. See ya!

Felicity says:

A long driving day but it was great to see the beautiful scenery. The only other time I have done this drive it poured with rain so I had to give the gardens and the lookout a miss. I've really noticed the heat this trip, usually when I visit at this time of year it is quite pleasant. But the Nissan has a "Max Aircon" button - you just hit it when the car starts - awesome.