The Big Island Tour, Hawaii

Author: Matt Preston Become a contributor

Our first day of marriage had to be something a little special so a few days earlier we booked up to go on a grand tour of the Big Island of Hawaii. It was going to be an early start but due to our weird jetlag waking us up at 6am anyway it wasn’t hard.

So we jumped on the big tour bus at 6am outside out hotel. We were the first on it and spent the next hour or so picking up 25 or so more people from hotels in the Kona region. Kona is a pretty little town where most of the business on the Big Island happens. It’s also where we got our marriage license from the day after we arrived in Hawaii.

The tour takes you on a 260 mile journey around the one and only highway that the Big Island has, Route 11 also known as Mamalahoa  Highway or “Hawaii Belt Road”. Take your pick.

Our first stop was a coffee plantation at Kealakekua Bay. Half way up the side of a mountain, coffee beans growing everywhere with a nice little cafe and tourist shop. Kona Coffee is very good (according to the tour guide), totally organic, very little pollutants in the middle of the pacific ocean. All very well but due to the cost of exporting the stuff Hawaiian coffee only fills 0.1% of the coffee cups drunk in the world.

Our tour guide was fantastic. The whole time he was driving he’d talk to us all through a headset mic about the vegetation, the history of the roads, the types of lava of which there are two. Lava that resembles rubble being pushed from behind by a bulldozer and the kinda most people have seen on TV which is the rubbery looking molten rock that oozes. We saw both, all from previous eruptions, hardly anything can grow on it for hundreds of years until it erodes into soil so you clearly see lava flows that run like black goo down from the mountain. The roads carved through piles of it at times. An amazing sight.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the Volcanoes National Park where we stopped a few times within it’s grounds. First at the Thurston Lava tube, a tunnel created by an eruption where the lava flow had run down the hill side, the outer edges of it cooling quicker than the centre, causing it to form a casing around the lava, insulating it. The tunnel was so big you could easily walk through it and in places looked like a subway tunnel. Amazing to think that around 350 years ago there was lava flowing through it!

Our next (and best) stop was at the observation point at the Kilauea Iki crater. A massive stadium of volcanic activity, the last as recent as 1983. The eruptions creating lakes of lava where the edges cool quickest, causing it to build a bowl or “Culdera” which eventually spills over and extends the size of the bowl. This has happened many many times at the site and the platform you can walk up to lets you look over into the latest crater. It’s an awesome sight, a massive naturally made Colosseum blocked up by cooled lava. This volcano is still erupting to this day but due to it’s current pressure and amount of magma almost 60km down it’s currently pouring magma through a lava tunnel right down to the sea where it is still creating new land.

We stopped at a couple of places around this sight. One a museum and the other a hotel where we had lunch overlooking the massive area. It really is a fantastic natural occurrence that’s worth see. Also hard to comprehend that the rock you see in places is younger than you are! You also get the feeling it’s quite temporary. It’s quite possible it could erupt here in the future and change the landscape once more.

Other stops on the tour included an Orchid nursery, a candy factory which was mainly just a sweet shop with big glass windows into the factory area and a stop at a pretty waterfall. We saw a lot whilst driving along too including a lot more waterfalls, crazy little American style villages and Parker Ranch, a massive area of land famous for cattle, cowboy’s and Starbucks now it seems. Even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there is no escape.

The tour was great fun, very easy and relaxing and helped us learn so much about the island that we’ve forgotten half of it already! I can remember a few nuggets though.

Captain Cook stumbled across these Islands and originally wanted to call them “Sandwich Island” After the Earl of Sandwich who sponsored the voyage Cook was on. The Polynesians had already called it “Hawaii” and thank goodness they did! He was also killed here.

The tallest mountain in the world is here, Mauna Kea is taller than Everest. Unfortunately most of it is under water and Mountains are only measure from sea level to peak making Everest the highest.

There are over 2000 types of Palm tree. There are no seasons here, the temperature is always between 26c and 28c at sea level. There are 9 different climates here though from tropical right up to snow capped mountains. The West side of the Big Island gets around 9 inches of rain a year, the East side gets around 300 inches. We recommend staying on the West side ;-)

Tour guides in Hawaii make great coach drivers and amazingly informative speakers but they also have a vast array of groan inducing jokes at their disposal. You have been warned!

For more information on the Tour check out their website.