Day 9 - Hawaii Again, Hilo

We have our final excursion in Hawaii, the tour of Volcano National Park. We start get into port in Hilo and go find our meeting place for the excursion. Once the organizer person arrives she has us follow her to a large garage door and asks us all to form a line, which we do. They open up the garage door and there is a large tour bus awaiting us. And I swear to God every blue haired lady and gray haired man step out of the line we were in, walk to the front of the line and cut in front of everyone. Ed and I can't help but laugh out loud and neither can the couple in front of us who turns to us and says, "They're worse than teenagers aren't they?"....lol.

The good news is that they filled that bus up and we were able to get on the 2nd bus which was only half full. I told Ed that this actually worked out better since all the pushy people were on that first bus.

Again we had a fabulous tour guide named Jane. She gave us a little bonus tour of this park in Hilo. She did this on the condition that we promised we would all make it back to the bus on time. She then told us that the last person that made it on the bus had to do the Hula for the rest of us. We were 2nd to the last once and you can bet I was bookin it to the bus and throwing my husband to the wolves!

It's amazing the difference in terrain in just a few miles on this Island. This picture was taken at just about 10 minutes away from lush green rain forest. We are up at an over look of the crater of Kilauea Volcano.

At another stop overlooking the crater we found sacrifices made to the volcano god Pele. Our tour guide says she actually prefers pork and gin, but people still leave other things.

And of course we had to do the tourist thing and get a picture taken on top of the hardened lava from when Kilauea erupted in the 1980's. Isn't he handsome girls?

Last thing on this tour was the lava tubes. We walked through this long dark dark tube. They do have lights every so often in this tube so you're not going into total darkness.

And when we came out the other side we were back in rain forest.

Again, Hawaiian Sunset.....