Arrival in Hilo
Trip Start
May 01, 2008
1
9
13
Trip End
Jan 04, 2009
Hilo,
Hawaii,
United States
Thursday, October 30, 2008
After arriving in Hilo I hitch-hiked into town and spent the rest of the day exploring. It turns out Hilo is actually quite small, and it has a very "island" feel to it. While this doesn't mean alot to anyone who hasn't lived on an island, let's just say it has a very relaxed and quaint atmosphere to it. The town has one main street, Kamehameha Street, along which all the cafes, tourist traps, and local markets can be found. The other side of this street was originally a shopping district, but was destroyed in a 1946 tsunami and so it now a parkland area.
I walked through all of the parkland, of which a number of pictures can be seen, before hiking 5km out of town to the hostel I would be spending the next 4 nights at. As it turns out the hostel is very well appointed and the dorm accomodations were fantastic while costing very little. I would even go so far as to say the accomodations were nicer than my current apartment in Honolulu.
In the late afternoon I checked out the coves near the hostel and came across a number of sea turtles, of which I managed to get a few good pictures of. I went out swimming with them too, coming within a metre or so of a pair as they swam around the bay.
In the evening the skies opened up and Hilo lived up to its reputation as the wettest town in Hawai'i, as it would every evening for the trip. Overall a very successful start to the trip and I looked forward to the following day's Mauna Kea tour.
