Located across from the Ironman start/finish marker, at N 19° 38.371 W 155° 59.839 /…read more5Q E 185645 N 2174356 on Kailua Pier in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Known as Plymouth Rock of Hawaii, this historical landmark has a placard commemorates the 195th anniversary of the arrival of the first missionaries in 1820. This is just a short walk from the oldest church on the island as is a must see religious as nd historical site for Christians.

A hidden gem rich in Hawaiian history, wildlife, and outstanding staff!…read more ​If you want to experience authentic Hawaiian history away from the crowded resort beaches, Kaloko-Honokōhau is a must-visit in Kona. ​Walking along the coastal trails gives you an incredible look at ancient Hawaiian engineering. The Kaloko Fishpond (loko iʻa) and massive stone seawalls built without mortar are mind-blowing to see up close. Along the paths, you can also spot ancient petroglyphs carved into the lava rock and historic heiau (temple) sites. ​Highlights of our visit: ​Honu (Green Sea Turtles): We saw multiple sea turtles resting on the shoreline at ʻAiʻōpio Beach near the harbor. Remember to give them plenty of space! (20ft to be exact) ​Cultural History: The park does a fantastic job preserving the spirit of how native Hawaiians lived and farmed aquaculture centuries ago. ​Exceptional Staff (Special shoutout to Ranger K. Cartee!) Park Ranger K. Cartee made our visit extra special. She was so polite, knowledgeable about the land and wildlife, and had absolute wonderful energy while answering all of our questions. When I asked about the walk to the beach, she explained it was about a mile each way from the main lot, but took the extra time to give us a game-changing tip: driving down to the boat yard road leads to a short, easy 10-minute walk instead. That suggestion was a lifesaver for my 70-year-old mother and allowed our whole family to enjoy the trip comfortably! Mahalo K. Cartee for truly carrying an awesome Aloha Spirit! :)

This is a NPS managed site that protects the ancient fish traps and fish catch ponds. centuries old…read more, all by hand to catch fish that come in on the tides to feed. One Way traps. A marvel to imagine

Hikiau Heiau at Kealakekua Bay is a nice state park we went to for snorkeling. I saw a few big…read morecrabs but not a whole lot of other creatures. Once you get in the water at the rocks, the ground becomes a gray sand and it was relaxing swimming there. There are a few areas at Kealakekua Bay to snorkel around.

If you want to connect to the Hawaiian people, this is a great start. See real history and stand…read morewhere the ali'i did!! Amazing and free to boot! Well worth the drive and the small amount of walking involved. This is what you come to Hawai'i for!

Believe everything people are saying about this hike! Beautiful experience, beautiful views, but…read moreit's a challenge getting back up even for a pretty athletic group. We stopped at the gas station to refill on water and snacks beforehand, trust me, you need to! The locals specifically said, we don't hike there, it's too tough to walk uphill, we swim across about 20 yards for an easier trip. My group was not swimming across, so we turned around after about an hour in the water. Downhill is easy (1 hour), uphill was strenuous (1.5 hours). Take plenty of shaded breaks and try to save your water until the end. It's rocky and good gripped shoes are requirement.

Beautiful hike in the big island! This hike has it all, including wildlife, views, nature, and so…read moremuch more. You start on a rocky dirt path that's surrounded by trees and tall grass. After a mile or so it really opens up and you get amazing views of the ocean and surrounding hillsides. It is around here that you can see a lot of mountain goats. Once you reach the bottom, you get to the main attraction, the snorkeling. I found that snorkeling very close to the rocks had a lot more fish. Lots of people go out to the deeper waters, but most of the fish are clustered in the rocky areas that are about 3 feet deep. You can also view the captain cook monument, which has surrounding plaques that describe his legacy. Bring lots of water, the hike back up is all uphill and can be very hot!

My friends, family and I went night snorkeling to see the manta rays. What a great experience! The…read morecrew is very helpful and gave clear instructions on what to do and what is prohibited (to not touch the sea creatures for example). If you need assistance to get to the structure, someone will help you! Just let them know. Highly recommend!

A great experience on a smaller vessel with only 10 snorkelers. What Great experience. Had some…read moregood information about the island and the ride back was great seeing the cost up close. Even got to see an owl in the sea cliffs.

Absolutely a must visit to see, feel and understand Hawaiian history…read more It was sad that the volunteers were not even faintly familiar with anything. Names, events and even basic royal history questions were not answered...only empty smiles with oh- there is so much history here...sadly they didn't know hardly any of it. I even asked about the hula group that teaches there, again no idea. They need to train the volunteers to actually know something about the place where they are volunteering.

Hulihe'e Palace is a beautiful piece of Hawaii history museum that sits in downtown Kailua-Kona…read more This palace was built in 1838 for Hawaiian royalty stayed here, in 1973 it was place on the national register of historic places, it was originally built out of lava rocks, the lava rocks fance today still secure the palace. The museum has lot's of priceless artifacts like furiture photos quilts and other cultural Items. I was sad because it was close on the day we dock there, a good reason to come back to Kona.

Our guide Fernando was EXCEPTIONAL. He literally knows everything about Hawaiian history, culture…read moreand native lands. His astronomy knowledge is even more acute. His passion for astronomy is infectious. This tour company uses high-end Mercedes all wheel drive, custom-outfitted vans and provides leeeegit all weather parkas for the freezing temperatures at altitude. Fernando served us dinner and desert, and guarded the van while we explored different areas of the visitor center and summit. After sunset, he parked in a private area and set up the most leeeegit telescope I've ever seen so we could study the planets in depth. This telescope was fully motorized and was capable of auto-seeking any objects we desired to view. It even auto-tracked to keep up with the Earth's rotation! Everything about this tour was top notch and an experience I'll never forget. Thx for sharing your passion with us Fernando!

Read great reviews about this tour company and decided to try it for myself. I did have a great…read moreexperience with them. You would receive email reminders about the tour. I also received a call the day before the tour and the lady answered all my questions. Addison was our guide. Our pick up point was Kona Crossroads Shopping Center. After this, we picked up the rest of the group at Queens' Marketplace. All in all, there were 14 people in the Mercedes Sprinter van (excluding Addison). The van was clean and customized with an area at one side that served as a mini overhead bin. We went to Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station. At its grounds, there was an opportunity to hike a little and see silversword plants (I did not see them though or maybe just did not know how to identify them). We had our early dinner there at about 4-4:30pm which was included in the tour. The veggie lasagna and brownie were good. Since this was about 9200 feet above sea level, I noticed that I easily got short of breath and lightheaded (which is not unexpected). The company provided warm Arctic style hooded parkas and one-time use gloves that kept us warm. We then proceeded to the observatories. A segment of the road up the observatories was not paved and it can be a little bumpy. By the time we got up the summit, the sun was indeed about to set. My lightheadedness and headache improved a little and I was able to enjoy the majestic view of the colorful sky and the clouds. A couple in our tour got engaged at the summit! After the sunset, we went to a lower elevation where we had the stargazing. We had warm beverage (choice of coffee, cocoa, apple cider) that was perfect for the very cold temperature. Learned about stars, planets, and had some astronomy review! Addison oriented us and showed us the stars. Using a Celestron telescope, we saw a few celestial bodies including binary stars, ring nebula (though it was very small to me), Saturn, and our moon. My acute mountain sickness was not too bad (and it got better with the descent) and I still enjoyed the experience. Bring your water bottle and don't forget to hydrate up there.

Yep, yep, this is a big one in every way. If you're on the big island, it goes without saying that…read moreyes, you should do whatever you can to make a trip up here. The first thing about coming here is knowing the rules. The below links from the University of Hawaii have all of them, and it is extensive. hilo.hawaii.edu/maunakea/stewardship/admin-rules hilo.hawaii.edu/maunakea/visitor-information/public-safety The below link shows the setup at the visitor's center. www.google.com/maps/place/Maunakea+Visitor+Information+Station/@19.7588885,-155.4562821,133m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x7953bf006cff862b:0x9590ce9b5623e0d1!8m2!3d19.7592729!4d-155.4561238!16s%2Fg%2F11msnjlp__?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDgyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D When you're coming up the access road, they want you to make the first right into the visitor center lot to stop for your 30-minute altitude acclimation period. I couldn't be bothered so we just went in one side and came out the other side at the checkpoint before going up to the summit. Yes, I was asked if we stopped for 30 minutes and I lied and said sure. The ranger knew I was full of crap, but he gave his safety talk and made sure I knew how to fully shift the Jeep into low gear and how to manually shift low gears as that is 100% needed on the way down. The road on the way up is a mix of decently paved road and unpaved rocks/gravel with some fairly large pothole/craters and the final hairpin S turn before the summit is a real doozy. If you have any kind of altitude sickness or vertigo...it's tight & sharp and it's a long ass way down. The main summit parking area has room for around...?? 25 cars. Once you get towards sunset, there were way more cars than parking spots. At the top you can get out and walk around. There is always a ranger presence there and there are a few port-o-pots up there if need be. During our ascent, we saw three or four different rainbows and had decent weather initially but most of the week it rained and eventually the clouds and rain found us up there and the visibility at the summit and on drive down was at the point where you could barely see the end of the hood. An obvious duh. When we left Hilo, it was almost 80. At the summit two hours later, it was 46 with a decent stiff breeze. As others have mentioned, the visitor center on the way down is the play as it's open daily until 9pm and you can stay on the grounds as long as you want. We didn't stay long or linger as it was pouring when we got down there. Very few people will ever get to the 9000-foot visitor center level let alone the 14000-foot summit. Plan ahead and do it if you can. Very unique and it's the type of thing you can't do anywhere.

Going to Mauna Kea was a must-do on our trip to the Big Island. We planned for our visit to line up…read moreperfectly with sunset. The visitor center is cool. Lots of good info. There's quite a bit of parking. It was super busy for a Sunday evening. We were in an all-wheel drive vehicle (Ford Edge) and the ranger gave us the green light to go up, even though all of the signs say 4-wheel drive only. They said they can no longer turn all wheel drive vehicles away. He recommended we stop every so often on the way down to let our brakes cool. The road is rough. Not paved. It's basically gravel and dirt the whole way. We only made it a mile of the 8 before turning around. The sun was so bright in our eyes we weren't able to see the road at some points and there is definitely some steep terrain going up. Our vehicle was already needing to have the gas all the way just to make it up. The thought of going down 8 miles of that sounded quite anxiety-inducing. So, we got back to the visitor center in time to hike the trail up the mountain across the road and catch the sunset. It's spectacular. The altitude change is no joke. I could feel how much harder it is to breathe with just a few steps into the hike. Be careful! The views are stunning though. So pretty. Definitely an experience worth checking out.

The Circle Island Tour was fantastic. Justin was a great tour guide. The amount of information that…read morehe has is incredible. He kept us entertained the entire time which says a whole lot considering how long the tour is. He was so full of great stories and information not only about the Island but so much more. I asked him had he ever considered being a Jeopardy contestant. lol . I highly recommend this company and I recommend Justin as your tour guide even more.

This review is for the Twilight Volcanoes and Stargazing Tour, with tour guide Drew…read more My partner and I had never been to the Big Island before, so we chose a tour that would essentially bring us around the island and visit some of the major "must-see" locations. We also happen to love astronomy, which made the stargazing tour an easy choice for us. It was also extremely important that we selected an experience that offered *small* tour groups and was locally owned and operated. Drew was an absolutely fantastic and entertaining host. His enthusiasm and knowledge shines through the way he spoke non-stop from the moment he picks you up. On this tour, we visited Bay View Coffee Farm, Punalu'u Bake Shop, Punalu'u Black Sand Beach, Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, and stargazed near Mauna Kea. This was a LONG tour, but was filled with so much fun that time flew by. Although we missed Kīlauea's most recent fountaining episode (51) by a few days, Drew still made time for us to catch the lava glow which was super cool and a highlight of the tour. Our weather was not super favorable with thick, overcast skies; and my partner and I actually gave up on our hopes of stargazing. But Drew is so observant of the weather that when a window to view the night sky opened up, he did so. He provided thick coats to those that needed them and spent some time pointing out different stars and constellations. By this time in the evening, it was really cold and we didn't mind our limited stargazing time. We truly enjoyed our experience, as well as Drew's expertise and respect in regards to Hawai'i's culture and history. We highly recommend that you take a Wasabi Tour early in your trip (like first day if you can), and then you can tailor the rest of your Big Island afterward.

My first luau and I did not know what to expect. My expectations were not high, due to the mix…read morereviews, but I had an amazing time! The food was good with plenty options, drinks were plenty, and the entertainment was wonderful. It was a beautiful experience to be exposed to a version of Polynesian cultural celebration. I appreciated every moment and the work of the dancers and musicians. I highly recommend and suggest to attend with an open heart and open mind.

I've attended many luaus in Hawaii before and this one felt very commercialized. For general…read moreadmission, you'll be seated at long tables with other groups. This wasn't a huge deal, but the venue was on a slope and the tables were spaced fairly close together which was uncomfortable. Some drinks had spilled and just ran down the table into other guests' areas. Early on in the luau, guests had the opportunity to view an Imu Ceremony which was cool and something I haven't had the opportunity to witness at other luaus. My group was immediately started with 2 drinks each which was sugary and didn't have much alcohol in it. And apparently their policy is that each guest can't have more than 2 drinks at a time, but you could ask to swap out your drinks (you don't have to finish it). The buffet had a good spread of items, from basics like salad to regional flavors like kalua pork. The quality was fine - obviously not Michelin star quality, but it wasn't school cafeteria food either. I appreciate the large plates because you could fit a little bit of each item on there so you could try it all. I didn't see many people go back for seconds. Clearly the luau organizers are strategic about the food lineup so people don't overload on the meat at the end. The entertainment was fine. The performers were great, but honestly I didn't feel like there was much energy from the stage nor the crowd. Overall, the experience could've been better. Many of the employees looked tired and stressed and seemed to be on auto-pilot. It felt a bit like the guests were like cattle being shuffled around.