I had a chance to go to big island of Hawaii earlier this year (4-12th Jan).
It is an amazing place with the active volcanos, green landscape, shoreline, colored beaches (black/green/white/yellow) and of course fascinating people. To me it is like a compact form of our Earth :) in miniature version.
It was a very nice trip and my first time to any island.
My friend Emily was my travel buddy with whom I did multiple cool trips before. Check out her travel blog for details on this trip. We had lot of fun there.
http://vegandtravel.blogspot.com/2015/02/happiness-in-hawaii.html
We camped at four different places to explore various unique parts/features of this island.
Some of the unique experience that I had - volcano hiking, swimming with sea turtle, swimming with dolphin, spotting whales. There were so much to do in a single trip.
Weather was super good !!! [specially when u compare the same time in Chicago :P]
I really enjoyed the beautiful green landscapes, tropical fruits, tropical flowers, colorful birds. All of the campsites were next to the pacific shoreline so we caught beautiful sunrise on few days :)
I tried to capture whatever I could but honestly it was too much for a machine.
You have to be there in order to appreciate the true beauty of the mother nature.
We met many interesting people on island -
Debra - She was in charge of the parking lot of the hotel I was staying at Kona. On the first night, I got there late at night and could not find any place to grab food. She was the person who gave me the address of the place that was open at that late hour and told me to try
Katsu chicken. Although I ate pizza that time but I tried it later and found that it's a very nice dish and very similar to small Chicken Cutlet [friends from my state will know this :) ].
Our first Coconut man [forgot to ask his name] - who was in Chicago many years ago [what a coincidence !] and he still has a poster from Chicago Blues festival !!!
Ethan - our second coconut man [this time we asked his name]. He and his girlfriend (who is from Vermont) were volunteering in a local farm. He truly understood the type of the young coconut we were looking for. It was very refreshing.
Von - She runs a local restaurant where we had local fish curry, Indian style. She was very nice to give us some advice on sightseeing but I think she was too worried about safety on campsites in general.
Travis - I named him "The rocking ranger" of Volcanoes National Park. He was an awesome storyteller. We stood there and listened to his talk which was mostly about geographic/geologic/historical information on Hawaii volcanoes. His father was a surfer in the island and his childhood was spent on this island, so he had lot of stories to share and I was really mesmerized by all of his short stories.
Dan - On the last day of camping we met this person. He was in charge of the camping ground. On all other campsites, we could not find any body to show our permit. So I was excited to find one person to show the permit at last :) He showed us a good place near camp to watch dolphins and in the morning I saw there a flock of them swimming. He also suggested to go to Two-steps for snorkeling.
Well now the pictures. I arranged them in 3 parts.
First set is from my dslr.
Second set consists of photos from my underwater camera while I snorkeled.
There are many great places to snorkel but we found two-steps (Honaunau Bay at South Kona, near city of refuge) is one of the best places to go for. Many locals have suggested that one too.
Finally in the third set, I have few underwater videos. Here is the youtube playlist link -
