We woke up to a lovely breakfast that had been made for us by our host. Banana pancakes, eggs, passion fruit, tea and coffee. Another conversation and we jetted out of there to go horseback riding in Waipio Valley.

This valley has a 1000 foot drop, over 3/4s of a mile. There are very clear signs at the top telling you that you must have 4×4 to go down (or rather…back up…) and that AWD is not enough. Driving down was fine…I still don’t understand how that white tour van managed to drive back up. The Valley itself has about 50 residents, who live without outside electricity, phone lines, tv, etc. I’m told they are mostly people who want to live “off the land”, some hippies, a few Veterans. Our taxi driver from the other day told us to be careful – people go in and they don’t come out. Our guidebook tells us to be wary of angry residents.

After having gone through the area, I think that if you had the right maps, that it would be a decent place to go hiking. We saw numerous people hiking down the road and some people wandering around the trails we were on.

We took the road north, across the top of the extinct volcano Kohala, one of 5 that erupted to create the Big Island in the first place. A nice drive across a mountain. Something that I thought of – this isn’t a drive “through the mountains”, because there is really only the one mountain, and it slopes downward slowly but steadily. Again with the bright green meadows

We reached the tip of the Big Island and looked out over the ocean.

Driving back down the tip on the west side was quite different. Here you can see quite clearly which is the dry, desert side, and which is the rainforest side. Back to black lava rocks piled up in rough formations, dried out grasses and very few plants at all. Interesting – on the side of the highway here, hundreds of people have stopped and picked up little white stones and graphitti’d messages such as R+G, Tupak, etc.

We arrived in Kailua-Kona and had to pull a tight left on a 45 mph highway. Scary. Drove around the north side of Kona for a bit trying to find our place and managed to…its the one without the address. “Dolphin View” the ad says, but we’re pretty far away from the ocean here. Having said that, so far I like the place. Our own bedroom and washroom. An ocean view and you can hear the waves and seagulls still. I found it incredibly peaceful after our long drive from Honokaa.

Breakfast this morning was english muffins and some array of fruit from the nearby trees. It’s Miranda’s birthday today and we’re going up Mauna Kea to stargaze and take in the sunset tonight!