LAND AHOY!!!

After a full week of rocking on the Pacific Ocean we woke up at 4am from our sleeping bags on the deck of the ship to see lights from Hilo, Hawaii off in the distance!  Finally, we were nearing the first port of our journey around the world.  The funny thing is, though, that it feels like we’ve all known each other forever on the ship and that the experience couldn’t get any better.  Well, our adventures in Hawaii confirmed that life could in fact get even more amazing!  At 6am we went through customs (because we were coming from Ensenada, Mexico) and then were allowed off the ship shortly thereafter.  The girls and I had done a bit of research but mainly planned on going with the flow in this port.  We took a cab to a big hotel just to get out of port, but then walked into town (about 2 miles away with our huge backpacker packs on) and found a hostel to stay in!  None of us had ever stayed at a hostel before, so we were just hysterical but it ended up being the best thing that happened to us!  It was just $25 each for our own room and individual beds. We paid, threw our packs down, and spoke to the owner about our game plan.  He was AMAZING! Long story short, we ended up renting a MINI VAN with us five girls and our two guy friends and heading out into the beautiful Big Island.  We called ourselves a family all weekend because we just had the best time exploring in our big white mini van.  Mychaela was the mom who was in charge of driving.  I was the dad in charge of navigating.  First stop: Walmart!  I’d never been there before so I was excited.  We needed to load up on some swimming shoes for snorkeling and food to sustain us while in India and other countries.  Next we followed our map on a beautiful scenic drive to a secret local lava beach where the best snorkeling on the island was.  It truly was fantastic snorkeling and gorgeous scenery all around. Our hostel owner had provide us with a bin of snorkeling gear so we took advantage for the majority of the day.  Didn’t see any whales or sea turtles but loved the experience anyways.  Later in our marathon of a day we loaded up in the minivan again and headed for the Mauna Loa Volcano crater to see the sulfur steam vents and lava flow. We had a blast there as we hiked around a bit and soaked up the vast landscape.  To finish off the day, we drove back and quickly showered (back at the ship- not in the hostel) before going to dinner at 10:30pm!!  We were all exhausted and starving but still managed to go to a cool local spot open 24hours a day.  After dinner all seven of us went back to the hostel and fell right to sleep.  Luckily we were too tired to think about the beds or sheets.  It was actually impressively clean though. The next day we woke up bright and early, grabbed a quick smoothie at a local café and headed out in the minivan again to visit the Akaka Waterfalls before having to be back on the ship at the end of the day.  The falls were breathtaking and the hike was gorgeous.  We even stopped at a beautiful lookout bay on the way back to soak up the scenery.  We had a big cheeseburger lunch then booked our flights for China and planned for Japan before returning to the ship.   Overall Hilo far exceeded our expectations in everyway.  We knew that this was just the beginning of a fantastic semester.

Next, to Honolulu, Hawaii.

-Hillary