6 Must See Places on Hawaii Big Island (Part II)

Hawaii Big Island – 6 Must See Places (Part II)

Hawaii Big Island is 267 miles around the entire island. Basically, it is about the size of the state of Connecticut. We took a tour of the island that lasted a little over 10 hours…yes, you read that right, over “A 10 Hour Tour, A 10 Hour Tour”!  And we still only scratched the surface of all the cool spots based on the locals and transplanted residents. We had an awesome tour guide that you will get to meet in some of the other posts.

So that you don’t miss the awesomeness of each location of this tour, I’ve broken this tour post up into 3 parts, with 2 attractions per post! So here goes Part II…

Part II: {(3) Rainbow Falls and (4) Akatsuka Orchird Gardens}

Rainbow Falls located in Hilo, Hawaii, gets its name from being able to see a rainbow under the falls at any given day. Of course, it rained during our visit (it is in a rain forest), so no rainbow but it was still an awesome site! You can see us holding our umbrella’s down just to take a quick pic below.

This was such an interesting plant, shown below by our tour guide. This plant can be used for multiple practical things. The root is actually a ginger root that can be used for cooking and the flower bud, that you actually see the tour guide squeezing, can be used for shampoo, which doesn’t leave a sticky residue and has a pleasant smell. It goes to show how the people of the Hawaii Island can really live off the land.

Akatsuka Orchid Gardens

This Orchid Garden is located in Volcano, Hawaii. It’s so cool because you can actually order the flowers while you’re there and have them shipped home to you. And speaking of flowers, one tidbit of information that the tour guide shared when we arrived, was that Hawaiian woman wear flowers in their hair signifying whether they are married, single or dating and still looking! So a flower on the right means single, on the left means married and both sides means you’re taken but still looking…hilarious! Well what was really hilarious is finding out this tidbit half way into the tour after wearing my flower on the wrong side…I joked with our tour guide, saying now you tell me after 4 hours…

But really, the Orchid Gardens had the most beautiful flowers. They actually smelled so lovely and had orchids that smelled like vanilla bean and some that smelled like chocolate…how would you like to have one of those in your office.

I hope that you enjoy the images below.