UWC Day 070 – Hilo, Hawaii – Rejoining the Ship and Driving the Southern Coast of the Big Island

Rejoined the ship in Hilo and then did a quick self-drive around the south side of the island before heading back to the ship. Home sweet home.

Photo Gallery: https://pics.mattichan.com/-uwc070

Morning Preparations

Woke up at 3:30am and headed over to the self-serve car wash to rinse off all the (very slight) amount of dirt from the campsite. Vacuum only took coins, so thank goodness I had the 50 cents I had won from slots a couple weeks ago on me.

Headed over to the lot, and got the car returned and then crossed my fingers and hoped there was an Uber driver driving so early in the morning to take me to the airport. Thankfully after about 10 minutes, I found a driver to take me the 1.5 miles to the airport (and also thankfully, they took the Pineapples off my hands so that they didn’t go to waste).

Flights

Two quick flights to get to Hilo. First from Maui to Honolulu, then from Honolulu to Hilo. The airports were PACKED. Apparently there were a bunch of cancellations the day before due to winds and weather, so everyone was getting put on planes today, and I was VERY fortunate to not be impacted, and got to Hilo safe and sound.

My Turo driver was nice enough to come pick me up from the airport and then offered to take me to the Port and wait for me to rejoin the ship so I didn’t have to bother finding parking and wandering around etc.

Rejoining the Ship

Got back to the ship, and it was quite a cool thing. As I was coming back to the ship, people were getting off, and SO many people were welcoming back home. It was really something, both crew and guests, made me feel all the warm fuzzies. We really are becoming a fun little community of fellow travelers, friends and dare I say, a little family.

Got to the ship, and had to wait for them to bring my cruise card, but didn’t really go through any long customs check or anything, just walked onto the ship with all my stuff and dropped it all off before heading back out to find my Turo driver.

It was good to be home.

Driving Around

Drove around again with GuideAlong (Affiliate Link – if you want to take a look at the app).

Chasing down the Fam

Headed back out to get the Turo and ended up noticing on Google Maps as I was pulling out that Nate and mom were pretty close, so I headed that way to see if I could find them. Got to the first stop, and as I got out of the car, their dot moved on the map, so I kept chasing them, until I got close enough that our dots were on top of each other.

Ended up finding them at Rainbow Falls. Found Nate first, then headed down and found mom afterwards, pretty fun to surprise them.

Lunch and Provisions

Stopped by Cafe Boba to get some food and drinks for the trip. Got a Moco Loco and didn’t pay attention to what I was ordering, and instead of just two eggs, I ordered an ADDITIONAL two eggs…no worries…they were delish.

One of my favorite types of Bubble Tea as well…boba + pudding + ICE CREAM…so bad for you, but so good.

Volcanoes National Park

After scaring Nate, I left the crowd (cause there were a LOT of buses), and headed as fast as possible to Volcanoes National Park. Got there and it was already too late, there were like a million people (not really). Visitor Center was packed, but more importantly, a lot of the parking spaces were completely full for most of the normal spots I’d gone hiking at.

Instead of waiting at any of the pull outs, I ended up just heading past all of them as far as I could till I found a relatively empty parking lot. Ended up at the Devastation Trail, and did the nice short hike real quick away from all the people and just enjoyed the leisurely walk.

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach

Left Vocanoes NP, since there wasn’t a ton of parking and there was a huge crowd, so ended up continuing south while I had time to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach. Saw a ton of Honu (Green Sea Turtles), and watched them dig out some burrows for themselves, saw a couple jockeying for position, and one swimming out of the ocean to join the pack.

Last time I was here, there was one turtle, this time, there was a ton more. Someone said they counted 15, I didn’t bother counting, cause I was just enjoying watching and photographing them.

Moon made an appearance as well while I was watching.

Spent most of the hour I was there watching just enjoying the sand as well…nice and warm, and not too hot, just like the turtles.

Back on the Ship

Made it back to the ship and reunited with the fam.

Food

Grabbed dinner and got some lamb, super delish.

Vibe Check

5 parts joy

Feedback

Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!