After our big helicopter tour of the Big Island the day before, on the 1st November we woke up wanting to do something a little more physically active. So, we drove our Mustang convertible over to Waipiʻo Valley (pronounced Y-P-O), to go for a hike.  We actually had planned to do a walk in a forest, although the forest trail was closed due to required maintenance.  The ‘hike’ basically turned out to be an absolutely ridiculously steep road, which went for roughly a kilometre down into the valley.  The walk killed us, it was absolutely awful.  We were soaking in sweat, had no water left, and it was horribly humid.  These bad things were compensated by being able to take this panoramic photo.

Down at the bottom of the valley, there was a perculiar black sand beach.  There appeared to be some hippies down at this beach, which looked completely unsuitable for surfing (massive rips), and completely unsuitable for sunbathing (coarse black sand and rocks).  I’m not really sure why they were there.  The valley has suffered from tsunami’s which have gutted the entire valley, killed people and destroyed houses.  Needless to say, we didn’t stay for long at this beach!

We passed through a really lovely little town on the way home, tucked away in the forests of the Big Island.  We stopped to have a browse at some of the shops, one of which contained a really big rock which was very impressively large looking, and this excited the store keeper that we appreciated her big rock.