The images above or just a sample of ALL the pictures I took over the few weeks we spent on the island of Oahu and The Big Island. We were on our way back to the airport in Honolulu and made a spontaneous decision to extend our trip and fly to The Big Island with NO car and NO hotel reservations - all on the fly! CRAZY!!
It turned out we ended up staying at a magical ECO resort - DragonFly Ranch, where we met new friends and experienced a VERY tropical experience among singing frogs at night and lush greenery and cute geckos during the day. It was only a mile from an amazing snorkel and dive site and a key Hawaiian heritage site, which was a highlight of the trip. We then spent a few nights over on the Hilo side, which has all the amazing water falls and Bontanical garden that I could have stayed for a lifetime taking pictures and being among its beauty. We were very lucky that the time of year we went there were not a lot of mosquitos and we didn’t have any rain (it started after we left)
Listen to nature’s own beautiful music - (coqui frogs - unfortunately invasive to the island, but they make sweet sounds as you sleep at night - fortunately, they stop around midnight ;)
The timing was also perfect, as the volcano had just erupted a few weeks prior and we were able to go to Volcano Park and witness the active lava still shooting out up to 20-25 foot lava & and smoke (called VOG) bellow into the sky. (It is unhealthy to breath this sulfur-filled air for very long, but it certainly created some very dramatic clouds and sunsets. We were fortunate the winds blew a lot of the smoke away and we were not there too long to have an impact)
And don't forget the most unpractical car ever ;-)
We had an amazing time.