Big Island, Hawaii

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The Kona Low is a weather phenomenon that affects the Big Island of Hawaii. It is a low-pressure system that develops off the coast of the island, typically during the winter months. The Kona Low can bring heavy rainfall, strong winds, and high surf to the island, causing flooding and other hazards. However, it can also bring much-needed moisture to the dry regions of the island. The Kona Low is closely monitored by meteorologists and can have a significant impact on the weather patterns of Hawaii.

If we had known, or researched more, about the Kona Low - we would have probably spent less time in the Hilo area. Read on and you will able to see what we mean.

IMAGE CREDIT: This image is the property of PerryPlanet via Wikimedia Commons and the CC0 1.0  license.

Here is a suggested one week itinerary, but first a few things we learned that we thought you might find useful:

• If we were to visit the Big Island again we would stay in one location and drive to the various locations. There would be some additional driving to see the entire island but you would only unpack once.
• The Kohala coast (northwest section of the island) is the most exclusive side of the island with big resorts and beaches. If luxury hotels or resorts is your thing, then that area might be where you want to stay.
• You can watch the weather and pick the best days to visit Volcano National Park or the waterfalls in the Hilo area. So change the days depending on what you want to see.
• The windward side (eastern) of the Big Island receives a consistent amount of rainfall, if you plan on visiting that area, bring a rain jacket or umbrellas. We went through a serious amount of rain fall while we were in Hilo.

The "Big Island" is officially known as the island of Hawaiʻi and received this nickname for a good reason: it is the largest island in the United States with a total surface of 4,029 square miles (10,433 square kilometers)! Its surface area is also greater than that of all other Hawaiian islands combined.

Click on any location below, to jump to that part of this page.

1. Kona International Airport Airport
2. Waikoloa
3. Hapuna Beach State Park
4. Honokaa
5. Akaka Falls
6. Rainbow Falls
7. Mauna Kea Visitor Center
8. Volcanoes National Park
9. Hōlei Sea Arch
10. Pahala & Coffee Stops
11. Kailua-Kona

We do not normally describe, or talk about, airports in our Travel Blog. However, Kona is unique in that as you land here and notice all the blackened ground in and around the airport, you realize that the blackened ground is the result of lava flows. Much of the runway is built on lava flow from the 1801 Huʻehuʻe flow from the Hualālai volcano. This flow extended the shoreline out an estimated 1 mi (1.6 km), adding some 1.5 sq miles of land to the Big Island and creating Keāhole Point. The airport opened on July 1, 1970, with a single 6,500-foot runway; the previous smaller airstrip was converted into the Old Kona Airport State Recreation Area.

Even after we picked up our rental car and proceeded north on Hawaii route 19, there were a number of blackened areas that we could see. It was only after we reached the eastern swing of route 19, that the blackened areas were no longer visible. Click here for a map of our driving route to Hilo from the Kona Airport.

Even though we flew into the Kona Airport, we decided to drive around the northern coast of the Big Island Click here for a map of our route from the Kona Airport to Hilo. because we had never been here and we wanted to see everything we could. Besides which, there was a Portuguese Bakery in Honokaa that we wanted to stop at! The drive is interesting because as you proceed north you depart the "high desert" like environment of the leeward side and you enter the rain forest appearance of the windward side of the island. Little did we know yet, that a Kona Low was going to bring occasional torrential rains to the eastern side of the island! A "Kona Low" describes a switch in the prevailing wind direction over the islands. Typically, Hawaii's weather is dominated by the trade winds which blow from the northeast - however the Kona Low causes moisture rich air to go to places that it does not normally go to and precipitation increases are the end result.

The eastern side (AKA windward side) of the Big Island is covered in green, lush, tropical rainforest. This is made possible by the large amount of rain that falls there, averaging around 140 inches of rain per year! This area is home to many of the Islands' waterfalls, and has interesting terrain, shaped by the rains and winds. Banyan and Bamboo trees are common, and grow to considerable size.

To see where we went in Honokaa and to see an image of the great malasadas there - click here.

The Liliʻuokalani Gardens

Liliʻuokalani Park and Gardens is a 24.14-acre park with Japanese gardens, located on Banyan Drive in Hilo adjacent to the Grand Naniloa Hotel. The park's site was donated by Queen Liliʻuokalani, and lies southeast of downtown Hilo, on the Waiakea Peninsula of Hilo Bay.

Carlsmith Beach Park & Richardson Ocean Park

We had been told that turtles were quite frequent at one (or both) of these two beaches, and since both were just a short distance east from the hotel on Kalanianaole Street, we decided to visit both. Unfortunately, the turtles did not get the memo that we were looking for them, but we did find some pretty neat lagoons at these two locations.

Akaka Falls State Park

Located 16.6 miles from our hotel, there are actually two waterfalls; Akaka Falls (442 feet high) and Kahuna Falls (100 feet). The walkway is paved for the entire route around the grounds (.4 mile) and there are roughly 200+ steps, so the trail is not wheelchair accessible. The parking lot is not large, and you should arrive here early in the day to avoid the tour buses that will start arriving after 10am.

The hike through the jungle to see the two waterfalls is not strenuous, and the views are constantly changing as you walk along.

The Boiling Pots

Within the 18 mile-long Wailuku River, near downtown Hilo, one can find the Boiling Pots. The almost cauldron-looking formation was formed as a large vertical column from lava flows years ago. The lava flows created huge spaces within that have now created the large cylinders as well as many underwater tunnels.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the river was formed by at least two lava flows coming from Mauna Kea, the oldest being as old as 10,500 years old, which is the same flow that formed Rainbow Falls. The “Boiling Pots of Wailuku” article by Katie Yamanaka states that the Boiling Pots get their name due to the sensation that happens when it storms, making the river rise and creating the “Boiling” look within the pots.

We were able to cover quite a bit of ground during our stay in Hilo, as far north as Akaka Falls State Park, Rainbow Falls & Boiling Pots, as well as downtown Hilo. Carl Smith Beach Park to the east of Hilo, as well as Richardson Ocean Park. Point being, there is quite a bit to see and do here. If the weather had cooperated, we had plans to do even more but that will have to wait for another trip here.

As you can in the above images, we narrowly avoided getting caught in a rain induced rock slide that closed the highway we were taking down to the beach near the Hawai‘i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden (Old Mamalahoa Highway, Papaikou). Needless to say, we had to turn around and go back up to the highway! The size of those boulders made it clear that it was going to take some effort to clear the road.

We had plans to visit the Waipio Valley area, but discovered that Hawaii had stopped allowing private vehicles to traverse the only road in that valley. Waipio Valley Road is open to locals who live or work there, or if you are in a tour bus - but otherwise you are precluded from driving on that road. We might have taken the tour bus, but with the weather being so erratic, we decided to skip it.

Since we were going to be driving from Hilo to Kailua-Kona anyway, and since the park is sort of "on the way" and as we have never been that close to a volcano, it was an easy decision to make to go to the park. Wow, we toured about amazed at the Kīlauea caldera (see above image). If you go there, be sure to stop at the Visitor Center as they have maps and a great deal of good information for your visit.

Exploring the Kilauea Caldera Area

The concept of standing next to a caldera this large, and realizing that what you are looking at is a "volcano plug" and that if that plug were to "let go" that you would be obliterated - is amazing. And then we walked through a "lava tube"!! The entire experience was something that defies explanation, it was other worldly indeed!

The caldera is massive; it has a length of 2.93 miles, a width of 1.95 miles, a circumference of 7.85 miles and an area of 4.14 square miles. That is a huge whole in the ground! You can drive around the caldera on Crater Rim Drive and that will allow you to circumnavigate the entire caldera. We decided to only drive around the northern and eastern side of the caldera, as we wanted to be in the Pahala area of the island next.

A Few Interesting Facts about Kilauea

• Kilauea is a shield volcano, which means it has a broad, gently sloping cone, similar to the shield of a warrior. Shield volcanoes are the largest volcanoes on earth.
• Kohola is the oldest volcano on Hawaii Island at more than one million years old and Kilauea is the youngest at between 300,000 and 600,000 years old.
• Since 1823 Kilauea has had 61 different eruptions.
• In 2014 Kilauea's lava flow threatened to destroy the Hawaiian town Pahoa, but the flow stopped short of the town and by 2015 the threat appeared to be greatly reduced.
• Kilauea is currently the world’s most active volcanic mass.

NOTE: We'd like to thank the folks at "Soft Schools" for the above facts about Kilauea. If you would like to view their entire list of facts, click here.

As you can see in our images, this is a very large hotel complex but it is really nicely laid out. Each of the pools (and the lagoon) are widely separated from each other, and there are numerous facilities to make your visit or stay as comfortable as possible.

The drive from Hilo to Waikoloa brings you alongside Mauna Kea on Hawaii route 200. It is an interesting drive, and it is fascinating to see that Mauna Kea has snow at the top! It is a wee bit nerve wracking to think that you are on a road, in an area between two huge volcanoes (Mauna Kea & Mauna Loa), and if either were to erupt, you could be obliterated!

The height of Mauna Kea allows the summit to be constantly snow covered, as you can see in the above image. Click here for a map of our Hilo to the Hilton Waikiloa route. We could have made a stop at the Mauna Kea Observatory, which is approximately 15 miles from Hawaii route 200 (formerly known as Saddle Road), but we could already see the snow on the summit and we were ready for some sunshine that we knew we'd have at the Hilton Waikoloa Resort. If you have more time, then you might want to consider visiting the summit observatories - they are described as providing the best star gazing that you will have ever seen.

It helps to have read that Mauna Loa last erupted in November 2022, so we could somewhat assume that we would not be caught in that volcano's eruption as we drove by. Mauna Kea last erupted 4,500 years ago - so it was reasonably safe to assume that we would not be caught up in an eruption from that volcano either. Note that the USGS says that Mauna Kea will eventually erupt again.

Because the drive from Hilo to Kailua-Kona via Volcanoes National Park was a very long day, with a lot of stressful driving, we wound up stopping at several interesting coffee establishments along the way, including; Kaʻū Coffee Mill Plantation   (Pahala, HI) where we got to see a huge macadamia nut tree grove as well as the coffee farm.

After we got a few more miles down the road, we stopped at the Miranda Coffee Farm Cafe   (Naalehu, HI) and had an excellent iced coffee. In between those two stops, we had malasadas at the Punalu'u Bake Shop   also in Naalehu.

There are more than 650 coffee farms of all sizes clustered along the ±20 miles of scenic roads on the Hualalai and Mauna Loa slopes. Many of these farms offer tours to the public, click here to view a web page describing various Kona Coffee tours that are available.

This turned out to be a 145+ mile drive, through some really interesting areas - however - all on curvy, narrow two lane roads. (click here for a map of Hilo to Kailua-Kona)

NOTE 1: Ka'u coffee beans are recognized around the globe for their intense flavor, smooth delicate flavor and low acidity. Grown next door to the Kona Coffee belt, Kau Coffee has been dubbed the "cousin of Kona." Point being, both the Kaʻū Coffee Mill Plantation and the Miranda Coffee Farm Cafe sell Ka'u coffee and not Kona.

NOTE 2: Coffee comes from trees and not bushes. Coffee trees are pruned short to conserve their energy and aid in harvesting, but can grow to more than 30 feet in height. Click here to read a complete description regarding coffee plants.

NOTE 3: Kona coffee is the market name for coffee (Coffea arabica) cultivated on the slopes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa. Ka'u coffee is also considered to be "coffee arabica". Click here for a more detailed description of Kona and Ka'u coffees.

Coffee Plantations Explorations

On our drive through Naalehu & Pahala and on to Kailua-Kona, we passed through areas where coffee plantations are numerous. As route 11 winds its way through the hills, visitors are treated to stunning vistas of the Pacific Ocean, rolling green hills, and rugged volcanic terrain. You will want to keep your camera at the ready, because some of the coastline views are amazing.

Since we were scheduled to fly back to the mainland from Kona Airport to Los Angeles, our plans were to depart Hilo and move over to Kailua-Kona. This would leave us within 7 miles of the airport, in a town that is loaded with restaurants and beautiful coastline. As you see by our images, the coastline is very pretty, and cruise ships arrive here frequently. However, we had thought we had left all of the rain behind in Hilo, but it chased us all the way across the Big Island and we got rain in the morning of our last Saturday.

We didn't realize how popular the area was until we started doing some research for this web page, ie; Kailua-Kona is the start and finish of the annual triathlon Ironman World Championship  , the Kona Coffee Festival  , and the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament  .

Kailua-Kona Scenes

Our condo was situated in a great location, and there was a excellent view of the bay as well as the surrounding area. Numerous restaurants and pubs surrounded us. The front steps of our condo were on Ali'i Drive, and the Ocean was just on the other side of the street. Image # 1 above was our view as we came out the front door of the condo building, image # 2 is the condo building, image # 3 is south of the condo approximately 1/2 block and image # 4 is our condo building's parking lot.

NOTE: Just wanted to point out that we rented this nice condo through VRBO, and we have always had very good luck with them! We don't want to sound like an advertisement for VRBO, but they have global reach now that they are a part of the Expedia Empire, and we've used them for rentals all over the world and have never had any problems.

Searching for Pele's Well

We wanted to search for and visit "Pele's Well" (located within Wawaloli Beach Park  ) which is a lava tube that surfaces just below the surface of the Ocean. We were sure that we were pretty close, but we did not apparently get to the correct location. Even so, this area was interesting and we explored it as far as we could.

Manini'owali Beach at Kua Bay

Once the rain relented, we decided to drive up to Kua Bay as our research had shown us that the beach there was very pretty. What we did not discover during our research, was that parking there is limited and is available only along the narrow road that leads there. We were fortunate to be in a tiny car and were able to grab a parking spot!

WARNING: The parking here is limited, you need to get here early in the day or you may not be able to find a parking spot.

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