Hilo Hex and Happiness ~ Hawaii Day 3

I don't know if one of us had The Brady Bunch cursed tiki stashed unknowingly on us (remember that episode, when they went to Hawaii?), but this day had its share of hexes!

We always seem to have "that day" on our vacation where the **** kind of hits the fan. It comes unexpectedly, and I think it has to do with exhaustion. It's usually centered around the kids, but they were nowhere around on this vacation which led me to believe that we just have one of those days on every vacation.

It started out as a normal day on the ship ...

We got up at 6:30 a.m. (getting a tad more used to the time change), had breakfast and went for a run. We were getting ready to leave the ship when we realized that we couldn't find Rick's portfolio that he carries. It usually has our passports, travel documents, printed documents with confirmations of rental cars, etc., itineraries, maps, and some extra money. We turned the cabin upside down ... nothing!

So, we deduced that Rick either laid it down at the security checkpoint in Maui when we were boarding, or our cabin steward stole it. We tend to believe that it was stolen because security surrenders everything that is left at the checkpoint to the ship. Nothing was turned in. Thankfully we didn't have our passports in it. But, it did have a lot of the other documents, our headphones and about $200. (We never found it.)

Let's just say that Rick's day had not started out too good. He was really down on himself for misplacing it.

We went to get our rental car, a convertible, and they were out of them. That just added fuel to his simmering fire.

We didn't have much planned for the day, because we had already done the waterfall thing that we planned for Hilo. So, I wasn't too hyped up about our plans either. We were just ... blah!

We drove to Rainbow Falls. It was pretty, but not too exciting. We did see a really cool tree, though.



Then we went on to Akaka Falls, a really big fall. We saw some neat foliage and it was a very impressive waterfall. But, still nothing to get us too excited.





The only other thing we had planned to do was a the four-mile Onemea Scenic Drive that I had read about. I pulled up the information on Rick's iPhone and we started driving it. It was somewhere along here that we talked about it and decided that we had to snap out of it! We were in Hawaii for goodness sake!

We rolled down the windows and took in the sounds and smells and beauty of the foliage. It really was beautiful! We came to a spot to view the Onemea Arch. This part of the island was possibly the most amazing thing I think I saw. The water was crashing into the rocky shore. The water was amazingly blue. It was something out of a movie.



We were looking for a particular trail that was supposed to lead right down to the water there across from the arch, but didn't find it. We realized we were at the end of the route so decided to turn around and try to find the trail.

On the way back we drove over a bridge. Looking down we saw a cave with water pouring out of it. I remembered reading about this. I read that if you take a small trail down to the cave, and if the water is not rushing too hard out of it, you can climb through the cave to a swimming hole on the other side of it.


We were not dressed for this! But, off we went. The rush of water wasn't too strong, but it was rushing some. The rocks were slippery!!! And it got dark in a hurry. It was a looooooong tunnel. About halfway through I almost chickened out. I was leading us. Rick was quite a ways behind. (He has tender feet and we were barefooted, so he was moving a bit more slowly). I came to a spot where I was going to have to walk through some water, not on the rocks. And it was dark and I had no idea what was under there or how deep it was. I paused. My heart was beating fast. I waited. I imagined an anaconda coming up and eating me. But then I flashed my camera flash into the water and saw that it was totally clear, monster free and only about 8 inches deep. So we went on.






When we got to the end of the tunnel there were more rocks to climb, naturally. But ahead was the little waterfall and swimming hole. I wasn't too excited about swimming in the swimming hole. But, the fall with the rushing water and stream was so refreshing and just plain cool!



Rick wanted to take pictures of me up on the rocks, so I climbed up. Here is a picture of me up there. Notice my sunglasses on my cowboy hat and my camera in my hand.



I sat down and *plop*! There went my camera into the rushing water. It sunk straight down. I screamed. I jumped in the water fully dressed. Rick came over. The water current was so strong and we were reaching down into the water, totally blind, trying to find it. I couldn't. I was panicked. There were so many rocks down in the water with little crevices. But Rick felt the strap and pulled it out. (Later we took the SD card to Walmart to check it and it was fine.) The camera was toast. I had that camera strapped to my wrist the whole vacation! Why in the world was I carrying my camera in my hand while climbing on rocks in a rushing waterfall???

I was so upset. But here's the ironic part. Rick was like, "It's no big deal. It's just a camera." I had to remind him that he wasn't so calm when he realized he had lost $200. Oh well, damage done. Thankfully the SD card still had the 100 pictures I had taken so far. And, we still had Rick's camera.

We took a bunch of pictures (with his camera) and headed back through the tunnel to our car.



When we were coming out another couple drove up and said, "Can you go in there?" We told them to definitely do it! They headed down. A bit later, though, when we drove back by, they were gone. They chickened out. Dummies. While we were down there so many cars just slowed down and looked and drove on. We wanted to scream .... "Get out of your cars!!! You're missing everything!" Remember my post about going on The Road Less Travelled while on vacation? The coolest things we did on this vacation were when we got out of the guidebooks, got out of our cars and started exploring.


And it wasn't over yet!

We drove on and found the trail we had been looking for. It's called The Donkey Trail. And, really, only donkeys should be attempting to walk down it ... certainly not two almost 40 year old yuppies in flip flops. It was a 600 ft. downward trail.



But. Oh. My. Gosh.

What we saw at the end of that trail literally makes me tear up right now. It was so beautiful I can't even begin to describe it. The pictures don't even begin to showcase its beauty!


There was a local family sitting there eating a packed lunch. What a view!

We took some pictures (Rick must of forgotten that he wasn't with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model because he kept wanting to take pics of me at these locations in my bikini. I'll spare you most of them.)





After the very difficult walk back up the 600 ft. trail .... We. Were. Done!!!

We stopped at Walmart to check on my SD card, buy some batteries and me some new sunglasses (because those apparently went over into the stream, too.), and some snacks. We went to Hilo Hattie and bought souveniers. We returned our rental car and went back to the ship.

You'd think at this point we would have died. Instead we got some beers and climbed into the hot tub. We drank a few, went to have dinner in the Aloha Cafe and I went to bed at 8:30 p.m.

Rick stayed up so he could see the live volcano we were supposed to pass by at 9:45 p.m. Apparently he ended up not being able to see much, so he was sorry he stayed up that late. But I guess seeing any amount of a live volcano isn't something you see in Oklahoma, so it had to have value of some kind. He came to bed at some time .. I couldn't tell you when.

This was our favorite day.