I'll continue my review of our trip to beautiful Hawaii. Today I will go over the Big Island, the southernmost and the largest of all the Hawaiian Islands. I've already told you about Onomea Bay, Akaka Falls and the Mauna Kea Volcano, whose views were really impressive! On our way, we stopped to buy some fruit: bananas of different varieties, carambola, coconuts, avocados, and others.

Along with the more common, yellow bananas, we found red ones too. They were called Lady Fingers - tiny but delicious!

Coconut pulp is thin and very tender. It's hit the spot, after drinking the juice.

The most delicious avocado I've ever eaten were of a deep purple color. However, they were not in Hawaii.

There is a lot of rain on the Big Island, making the vegetation lush. Several movies were filmed there, for example, scenes from "Jurassic Park".

Not far from 

Hilo

, the capital of the island is 

Rainbow Falls

. The flow of water rushes into a deep gorge from a height of 82 feet (25 meters). This is the Wailuku River.

We didn't see the rainbow, the sun was hiding and the sky suddenly became cloudy. The weather changed very quickly and, often, dramatically. It was dark and damp in the morning, then it cleared off, and in the afternoon, clouds appeared again.

After the waterfall, we went to Punaluu - the world's most famous beach, with black sand. It arose as a result of the eruption of one of the local volcanoes; the sand is actually crushed lava. This place is also famous for its giant turtles who hang out there. They are an endangered species, so it is forbidden to get closer than 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) of them. They crawl to the shore and lie there for a long time, basking in the sun.

There are many turtles, some of them sleep on rocks, while others swim near the shore. And they behave quite brazenly, pushing people with their flippers if they need to swim somewhere. I imagined the, touching me if I went into the water to swim . . . ugh!

From here, you can clearly see how lava flowed and thickened.

And here's the black sand.

I'm touching lava.

We also saw mongooses hanging around! This was my first time seeing this animal in real life!  

Hawaii hibiscus has such striking colors: pink, yellow, white, and even different shades of red!

I'm sorry for the quality, I took this from the window of a moving car. These are Evacuation Route signs, indicating the direction of movement in case of a tsunami - opposite from the coast, inland. The threat of floods is very high, as earthquakes often occur in the ocean.

Finally, here's Banyan Tree avenue in 

Liliuokalani Park

- Banyan Drive. The road meanders around a golf course. Trees were planted by famous people.

George Herman Ruth, the famous baseball player known as Babe Ruth to the world. There were also trees planted in honor of Franklin Roosevelt, Senator Richard Nixon, Amelia Earhart, and musician, Louis Armstrong. I didn't know the rest of them.

In the next review, you will see an orchid plantation and an active volcano (The Big Island. Plantation of Orchids and Active Kilauea Volcano)! No, I'm not kidding :)