Today we booked out what we would be doing for the rest of the week.  At 8:30 a.m. we sat through a presentation on things to do on the Big Island of Hawaii.  After seeing all the interesting things to do, we spent a bit of money and booked out 4 different items.  This in and of itself was rather impulsive for us.  We usually never do this and hate to spend money.  That is why we upgraded to the jeep, so that we could drive the island by ourselves.  But we caved and so here is the schedule for the week:

1. Sunday – we are going to church at 9 a.m. in Kona.  Then around 1 p.m. there is a celebration downtown Kona.  I guess it is a holiday weekend, something to do with celebrating one of the old kings.  So we are going to experience that with the locals.  Then at 5 p.m. we are going to a Luau.  There will be food and a show.  That will round out the day.
2. Monday – we have scheduled a helicopter ride over the whole island.  From what I have been told, it is an amazing ride.  We will be flying over the volcanoes, close enough that if the doors were off, we could feel the heat (they do have have options where you could chose to fly with the doors off).  The volcanoes are on the south side of the island.  We then will fly up the east coastline to the north where there are a number of beautiful waterfalls and they hover in front of those falls so that we can take pictures. For the rest of Monday we are not sure what will happen.
3. Tuesday – we will be six wheeling and hiking into a couple of waterfalls.  We will be going with a group tour to see a couple of the waterfalls close up and personal.  If we want, we can go swimming under the falls.  They will feed us and we will hike back out.  The six wheeling is what we will be doing into the trail head.  They did mention that there are some areas where the ride could get a little rough.
4. Wednesday – we will be taking a bus tour of the whole island.  The bus will pick us up in front of the resort and we will spend most of the day seeing the sites.
5. Thursday – first thing in the morning we will be sitting through a 90 minute presentation.  By doing this we received some freebies from the resort, reducing the cost of all our adventures.

So, those are the scheduled items.  Other items we will have to schedule in.

• Attend the Kona Temple
• Drive to Hilo and visit the botanical gardens
• Drive to the top of Mauna Kea, a 13,796 foot mountain.  I guess this mountain actually gets snow on it during the winter months and has even received snow in July. There are a number of observatories close to the top of the mountain.  We will be going past these and all the way to the top, I hope.
• Snorkeling.  We would like to try out snorkeling while we are here.  From what they say this is one of the top 5 places in the world to do it.

There you have it, our plans.  Let’s see how they all pan out.

With that being said, our Saturday was quite eventful.  First, after our presentation had finish and we had spent a wad of money, we drove up to Kona.  And, as we do on most Saturdays, we went to Costco.  Since we had spent a bunch of the green stuff, we decided on a cheap lunch at Costco.  It seems that no matter where we go, we always seem to find a Costco and we always go in to look around.  We like to see to the different items that the local store is selling.

On the way back to the condo, we stopped at the temple to get the schedule and find out what time church started.  There was a feast going on at the Stake Center.  We walked through and the gym was full of people eating.  When I asked someone what time church was, they didn’t know.  We found out later from some young girls that this was a funeral for a 29 year old lady who had passed away.  The story we received from the girls was something about a kidnapping and the boy friend wrecked the scooter.  That is about all I can tell you.  But what I can say is the feast was quite elaborate.

After stopping back at the condo, we headed south along the western coast of the island.  In the presentation they were saying that this island has 11 different climates and it is interesting as you drive to see the varied landscapes.   We went through semi desert, forest and lava waste land.  We had stopped at a scenic point to look at all the lava rock.  As we looked at the rock, we noticed some were a brownish color and some were black.  Then we realized that the black rock was from the last lava flow back in 1959 and you could see the flow patter of the lava.  It was quite interesting.

We saw a number of these flows as we drove to South Point, which happens to be the south most point of the United States.  On our way to South Point there was some prime pasture land, green and beautiful.  As we got closer to the coast, the grass turned brown and almost desert like.

South Point is all about steep, rocky, lava cliffs.  As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed a number of tent like structures and big fishing poles set up along the cliffs.  Come to find out it was a finishing tournament that had started last Tuesday.  The person that catches the largest fish (it has to be a specific fish, all others would be used as bait, so I was told) will win the prize.  Not sure what the prize will be, but they had all been camping there since Tuesday.  I have to say that those to little Honey Buckets were probably pretty nasty by now.  South Point is a pretty desolate place.

There is a green sands beach close and we were thinking about taking the jeep down to the beach, but it was late and close to dark.  We decided it was time to drive back to the condo.

We arrived back around 8 p.m. and decided to go the Sheraton Hotel, which is close to the condo.  After dark, they shine this bright light into the water and huge manta rays come up close to feed on the plankton. I guess the light draws in the plankton and so that becomes a feast for the manta rays.  Some of these sea animals have spans of up to 17 to 18 feet.  The ones we saw were not quite that large, but still impressive.

There you have it.  Our first full day on the Big Island of Hawaii.  In our driving we found a radio station that was nice, KBIG 106.1.  I think the BIG is for the Big Island.  Interesting.

We went to bed around 10 p.m., which is 2 a.m. Utah time and my body was telling that something is just not right with this scenario.  So when I laid my body down to rest, it blacked out.

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