Hilo, Helicopter Volcano Tour and Falls

Our third full day revolved around a helicopter volcano tour that we would take in the afternoon in Hilo.

The drive wasn’t too bad, the kids were surprisingly civil with each other.

We walked downtown for a while, shopping in it’s little shops and settling for a mexican restaurant that had some very unique Hawaiian flavors (surprisingly). After we went to a park/garden close to downtown and the airport.

Finally around 3pm we boarded our first helicopter tour (a first as a family or individually). We ended up using Safari and the tour was incredible. I have a ton of video that I plan to trim down to a short clip, photos will go up on flickr later.

That afternoon we checked out Rainbow Falls (east of Hilo) and Pe’ePe’e Falls (just north of Rainbow Falls). this was an experience too since we climbed under the railings and trekked down to the frigid “Boiling Pots” for a swim. Avery and I jumped in and were headed for the falls up stream but it started to pour rain and we had to head back because of it, it was running late too. I have some cool video of this too but I’ll need time to create something watchable.