Hawaiian Radiance: Volcanoes National Park
When I read the reviews for Carnival’s Volcanoes National Park tour, I found many people were disappointed that they didn’t get to walk through a lava tube.
I decided to look for outside tours that included a lava tube and ended up booking the Big Island Volcanoes National Park tour. This tour includes Volcanoes National Park with a walk through Thurston lava tube, a black sand beach, Rainbow Falls, Big Island Candies, and a drive through a Japanese garden.
In the port I found someone holding a sign for my tour company.
She directed me to the guy with the clipboard.
He told me to sit down and wait until they called Donna’s group. They did that at 9:15.
The bus is decent. It’s nothing fancy. All 24 people are here. The bus is packed. We’re leaving 10 minutes early.
Our first stop is the black sand beach.
Apparently there’s a couple who booked this tour in the terminal so they were last on the bus and got split up.
A lady who is next to the guy wants me to give up my window seat and go sit on the aisle by her so that couple can sit together. I want to be able to take pictures from the bus so I’m going to try to hang onto my seat. She should give up her window seat since she’s so concerned.
This is Banyan Tree drive. These trees were all planted by famous people in the 1930’s.
This tree was planted by Babe Ruth in 1933.
Coconut Island
This is the Japanese Garden. This is a drive by and it’s on the other side of the bus so I couldn’t get much of it.
This is a tsunami lighthouse
We are approaching our next stop which is Rainbow Falls.
There are two primary locations for viewing the falls here. One is above them to the left. The other is on a bridge directly across from the falls.
This is the lookout above the falls.
This is from the bridge. You can sometimes get a rainbow in your picture from here. I did not.
This is another of the bronze king statues with the gold cape like we saw in downtown Honolulu.
This is a macadamia nut orchard.
I next stop is Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Visitor Center.
On the way in they gave us samples.
They had sandwiches for sale but not really a menu. They just had some cardboard boxes stacked up so I just went for some macadamia nut milk ice cream. They had some nice looking cookies but they were way too big.
I’m going simple with vanilla.
While I’m eating my ice cream I’m going on a little self guided tour over here.
It doesn’t look like anyone is working today.
This is a macadamia nut tree.
We are now on our way to the main attraction, Volcanoes National Park. That’s a 25-minute ride from here. Kilauea has been erupting recently so our guide has been tracking it and hoping it would start before we got there today but it has not. I’ve been following it for a few days on this live stream.
Our guide airdropped me these pictures from two weeks ago.
The Visitor Center is undergoing renovations for the next two years. Some of the displays have been temporarily moved to the Welcome Center where we are heading.
The weather is less than ideal right now.
You can rent these. There’s also a volcano hotel but our guide says these are cheaper.
It’s a bit windy with light rain. I decided it’s a good time for a souvenir. I got a long sleeve shirt for $32. Short sleeve are also $32. Sweatshirts and rain coats are $65-66.
We are heading to the volcano viewing area.
The weather isn’t great right now.
You can stand in front of these steam vents for a steam facial.
It’s not clear. It’s very difficult to see anything from here right now.
It’s the luck of the draw with that. These pictures are from someone who went on a tour that came here first thing this morning.
Now we are heading to Thurston Lava Tube.
Lava flowed through here 500 years ago.
After that we headed back to the port. I do recommend doing a tour to Volcanoes National Park while you are here. It doesn’t have to be this specific tour. I know people who had luck booking last minute tours. The couple that booked our tour late got it at a significant discount.
