This year, we decided to return to The Inn at Kulaniapia. It's located just outside of Hilo in a macadamia nut farm next to Kulaniapia Falls. When we visited this year, it had been really raining on the Hilo side, and thus the waterfall was really pumping. Compare this picture against one from 2000.
This is Rainbow Falls. Since it was raining (again) in Hilo, we obviously couldn't see the rainbow. But compare the volume of water versus 2000 or 2003!
This is Akaka Falls, another great waterfall northwest of Hilo. We guestimate that there was about 10 times the volume of water rushing down this waterfall as there was the previous year. We caught this picture on a dry day!
After fighting the rain showers all day, we finally found some blue sky and sunshine in the Puna district on the southeast side of the island. This is Kehena beach, where we saw a bunch of dolphins just offshore. Many people went out to go swimming with them, but we decided to watch from shore.
Later on we revisted Kalapana, which was destroyed by Kilauea's lava flow in 1990. Here, we found a huge tiki idol out of lava.