Aloha!
Everything is still beautiful in paradise. Yesterday we spent the morning in Hilo, scouting out some of the local digs. We began the day early at the most amazing farmer's market you could imagine. We bought five different kinds of mangoes, a bag of little lychee thingies, and a slew of local veggies. After a breakfast of fresh summer rolls from the market, we explored the streets of Hilo. Ari, the hairy monster that he is, needed a trim so we found a hokey local barber shop that turned out to be quite a scene. On our way out of Hilo, we strolled through their Japanese botanical gardens.






We then hiked to nearby Rainbow falls and saw a zillion enormous tadpoles that looked like they would eat us for lunch. Luckily, they were not hungry. A short way down the road, we explored Akaka falls and Kahuna falls, two more amazing waterfalls. Akaka falls is 440 feet high and Kahuna, well, it's the big Kahuna. To get to the falls we hiked through an incredible rainforest. After leaving the falls, we stopped in a tiny town for lunch, fish of course!



We then drove back to Kona, stopping briefly to photograph the street sign at Puu Nani Drive - hehe. Along the way, we saw a perfect rainbow. We could see both ends of the arc hitting the ground. Unfortunately, we could not find the pot of gold.

Today, back in Kona, we beached it. We went to a small beach frequented by locals and did some really awesome snorkeling. As soon as we put our masks in the water we saw that we were surrounded by countless tropical fish of all colors. There were parrot fish, angel fish, little tubers, puffer fish, grouper, and whole bunch more that we couldn't find on Snorkel Bob's handy-dandy fish identifying chart. In the evening, we checked out downtown Kailua-Kona and did a little shopping. We had a little more of the famous Kona Coffee and tried some Kava Kava at a local joint tucked behind the touristy shops. We'll be flying out to Bangkok on Saturday, but we still have our cell phones until then if you need to get in touch. Until then, we'll be on the beach working on our tans and eating mangoes.