Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
place for a picnic; you can sit at old redwood picnic tables and watch the white
combers race upon the black-sand beach at the mouth of Waipio Valley.
From the lookout, you can hike down into the valley. Do not, I repeat,
do not
attempt to drive your rental car down into the valley (even if you see someone
else doing it). The problem is not so much going down as coming back up.
Every day, rental cars have to be “rescued” and towed back up to the top, at great
expense to the driver. Instead, take the
Waipio Valley Shuttle
(
&
808/775-
7121
) on a 90-minute guided tour. The shuttle runs Monday through Saturday
from 9am to 4pm; tickets are $40 for adults, $20 for children 4 to 11. Get your
tickets at
Waipio Valley Art Works,
on Highway 240, 2 miles from the look-
out (
&
808/775-0958
).
You can also explore the valley on a narrated, 90-minute
Waipio Valley
Wagon Tour
(
&
808/775-9518;
www.waipiovalleywagontours.com), a histor-
ical ride by mule-drawn surrey. Tours are offered Monday through Saturday at
9:30am, 11:30am, 1:30pm, and 3:30pm. It costs $45 for adults, $23 for chil-
dren ages 4 to 12; call for reservations.
HILO
Contact or stop by the
Downtown Hilo Improvement Association,
252
Kamehameha Ave., Hilo, HI 96720 (
&
808/935-8850;
www.downtownhilo.
com), for a copy of its very informative self-guided walking tour of 18 historic
sites in Hilo, focusing on various sites from the 1870s to the present.
ON THE WATERFRONT
Old banyan trees shade
Banyan Drive
, the lane that curves along the water-
front to the Hilo Bay hotels. Most of the trees were planted in the mid-1930s
by memorable visitors like Cecil B. DeMille (who was here in 1933 filming
Four
Frightened People
), Babe Ruth (his tree is in front of Hilo Hawaiian Hotel), King
George V, and Amelia Earhart, but many were planted by celebrities whose fleet-
ing fame didn't last as long as the trees themselves.
It's worth a stop along Banyan Drive—especially if the coast is clear and the
summit of Mauna Kea is free of clouds—to make the short walk across the con-
crete-arch bridge in front of the Naniloa Hotel to
Coconut Island
, if only to
gain a panoramic sense of the place.
Also along Banyan Drive is
Liliuokalani Gardens
, the largest formal
Japanese garden this side of Tokyo. This 30-acre park, named for Hawaii's last
monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, is as pretty as a postcard from the East, with bon-
sai, carp ponds, pagodas, and a moon-gate bridge. Admission is free; it's open 24
hours.
OTHER HILO SIGHTS
Lyman Museum & Mission House
Ages 6 and up.
The oldest wood-
frame house on the island was built in 1839 by David and Sarah Lyman, a mis-
sionary couple who arrived from New England in 1832. This hybrid combined
New England- and Hawaiian-style architecture with a pitched thatch roof. Built
of hand-hewn koa planks and timbers, it's crowned by Hawaii's first corrugated
zinc roof, imported from England in 1856. Here, the Lymans served as the spir-
itual center of Hilo, receiving such guests as Mark Twain, Robert Louis Steven-
son, and Hawaii's own monarchs. The well-preserved house is the best example
of missionary life and times in Hawaii. Allow at least an hour to look at all the
artifacts from the last century, including furniture and clothing from the
