Hawaii was amazing! We couldn't have asked for a better trip! The weather was amazing, there was never a shortage of things to do, and best of all was the amazing company! ;)
We were in Oahu for 5 nights. We hiked over a mile every day, including 2 hikes to go see the famous Banyan tree...which we thought was only famous from LOST, but turns out they were in the middle of building a set for a scene in Pirates 4. We think they were going to film the day after we left, seeing as they were already bringing in the trailers the day we left, but still had not finished cleaning up the mess they made building the set. We went to Pearl Harbor...such a humbling trip. There were def moments I caught myself tearing up just thinking about everything that happened and how terrible it was. We hiked Diamond Head...Tanner made it all the way to the top. I, unfortunately, did not climb the last st of stairs to the top. We went snorkeling at Haunama Bay. There were a lot of different types of fish, but def not the AMAZING experience we were expecting. Tanner went golfing one day while I drove the cart and took tons of pictures.
My favorite part of Oahu was swimming with the dolphins. We swam with a 1/4 False Killer Whale! I was a little scared at first, just being in the water with such big animals, but my the end I didn't want to leave! Our trainer had the dolphin do tons of tricks, including a "Jaws" impression which was hilarious.
We also went to the big island, Kona side, for 4 nights. This was (somewhat) the more relaxing of the trips. While we were in Oahu, we never had a resort day where we just hung out by the pool all day. We didn't do that in Kona, either, but we did have 2 days where we relaxed by the pool for at least part of the day. We went to the Kona Brewery and Pub and went on a tour of the brewery since Tanner really wanted to go. I am NOT a beer drinker, but went along since it was our honeymoon and what else would I do? Well, turns out Kona makes some pretty good beer! My favorite was a wheat beer that also had passion fruit in it. There was also a beer with coffee in it that I thought would be disgusting but I ended up enjoying it...and all the other beers I tasted! We ordered pizza for dinner. We got to "make" our own, so we chose alfredo sauce with pepperoni and pineapple (the pineapple in Hawaii was AMAZINGLY fresh!). We loved the food so much that we ended up going back for dinner on our last night there! We also took a 2.5 hour drive to the Volcano National Park so we could see an active volcano. We toured the park and then ventured another 1.5 hours out of our way to go see the lava flow. We weren't expecting to see much until the sun went down, but while we were there a patch opened up and huge ammounts of lava started flowing...def an experience I don't think I'll ever forget. Tanner just happened to have the video camera out and ended up catching the whole thing on film! Our last big hurrah in Kona was going parasailing. I have been probably 5 times now, but Tanner had never been and it was def a great experience! While we were in the air we saw a group of Spinner Dolphins playing (and jumping and spinning) below us! We couldn't take our eyes off them! When the other group went up our driver went back over to the area we first saw them at, but they were gone by this point. Thankfully, another group (maybe the same?) swam by the hotel later while we were at the pool so we got to watch them from a much closer view.
All in all we had an amazing time on our honeymoon. Great food, great weather (rarely rained...mainly just in the mornings or when we were in the rainforest), and of course great company.
Sorry this is so long! Hopefully I will be updating more often and with more interesting news! ;)
