Hilo, HI

I tried to post about our 4 sea days last night but it would not load then disappeared completely. Guess the Blogger app isn't good with a slow connection. After all those days at sea we were very ready to hit land today. The ship we are on, the Amsterdam, holds 1300+ passengers. We are currently traveling with 923 so there are a number of empty cabins. There are 608 crew! No wonder the service is so good. We will have 12 formal nights. We receive gifts on each one. Our first gift was a very nice laptop size bag that has "Asia Pacific Grand Voyage" on it. Inside is a box which contains a journal and luggage tags. There is also a smaller zipped bag with travel essentials like bandages and antibacterial. Nice gift! We also received gifts from our travel agent, another nice bag, tote style, and a wind breaker, both with a tiki logo for the grand voyage. We will have extra luggage with out buying anything!

We arrived in Hilo at 10 am. Each passenger was given a fresh floral lei as we disembarked, nice. We got on the Avis shuttle to pick up a car at the airport. We first headed to Volcanoes National Park. We'd visited there 4 years ago during the World Cruise but I wanted to get my National Parks passport stamped. Mission accomplished. We did find out that just 5 weeks ago the lava flow that had been hitting the ocean and making the island larger diverted itself and is now burning down rainforest. We hit the road back thru Hilo then north to the Botanical Gardens. There was a "scenic route" so we took that. Stopped by the road where others were stopped and walked down a path. It was kind of the back entrance to the Botanical Gardens without paying! We did go to their visitor center but decided to head on to the World Botanical Gardens instead. 

The World Gardens has zip lining, we passed. We went to see a waterfalls then walked thru the garden to a grove of Rainbow Eucalyptus trees. I had never seen anything like it. The bark as it peals reveals bright reds, orange and green! Really beautiful. We then took a short walk thru a rainforest which kind of look like the rest of the island!

We went back to Hilo and walked downtown a bit. There is a festival tonight so many streets and stores were closed. We returned the car and are now sitting outside a cafe to use the free Internet. Hope this will post this time. We have to be onboard in less than an hour. The ship is 2 blocks away. 

I tried to email a picture of the bark from my phone to my iPad with no luck. Looks like my blog will be without pictures this time, bummer........was able to add the picture in Honolulu!