Sunday, August 28, 2011


Ziplining in Hawaii - To Count or Not to Count


Aloha! We're back from Hawaii and I'm here to tell ya the Big Island is INCREDIBLE! Gorgeous, interesting, and fun.   Spent a couple of days at different beaches.  There were green, white, and black beaches, with sand textures ranging from soft and fine to pebbles the size of couscous.  A few other beaches weren't sand at all, but rather solid, black lava.  The water was crystal clear and various shades of blue depending on the depth.  It was amazing.  The area was less developed than the I thought it would be, with only 5-6 "main" (i.e. one and two lane) highways to get around the entire island.  The climate/environment ranged from rainforest to coastal to pasture to mountainous...with a lot of hardened lava/volcanic ash in between. 

We toured a Kona coffee farm and walked through macadamia ("macnuts") groves. We went kayaking, snorkeling, and ziplining, and we hiked to waterfalls, craters and volcanoes.  Some of us adventurous types got as muddy as possible riding an ATV while others elected to go horseback riding instead. Everything was a blast but my favorite activities were kayaking, the ATV ride, and of course, ziplining! 

Which brings me to a quandary about my bucket list.  Technically speaking, the plan was to zipline over a waterfall. Unfortunately, the operator switched the lines to new locations just a few weeks prior to our trip and hadn't updated their website. The original tour included lunch by a waterfall and lines that went over a few more, but the tour we ended-up with didn't have ANY waterfalls, much to my surprise and disappointment. Hence my quandary: does the trip count towards my bucket list?  I'll go with "no, not really," and consider it only partially fulfilled.  That way I have an excuse to go ziplining again in order to properly complete the waterfall portion.

No comments:

Post a Comment