The Palm Terrace Restaurant in the open air atrium of the Ocean Tower at the Hilton Waikoloa Village supports a nice large population of birds during the breakfast hours. If you leave your table and do not cover your food, it is bound to be "attacked" by a flock of birds, like below:

Every day we enjoyed a nice breakfast buffet as a part of our room price in the travel package. It was a $27.75/person value, and for the 5 night stay, it was actually a discounted rate over the standard room rate, go figure….

It looks like text messages to the blog will be the thing for the next
few days. This resort hotel is fantastic, but I do feel like we are
being “nickel & dimed” to death, considering what the nightly room rate
is here (rack rate is $700 to $900 a night according to the rate card,
of course we paid much less that that with the package deal). However,
high speed internet is an additional $15.95 a day! Not worth it to post
pictures to the blog…

They also charge $9.00 a day for self parking or $14.95 for valet
parking! At least we found out that they do complimentary valet parking
for people with handicapped parking plackards. Sure glad I brought
mine, because it is about a ½ mile up hill to the lobby.

At least they don’t charge to ride the inta-resort tram or canal boats!
But, if you choose to eat at the resort, plan on a daily food bil of
about $125 per person. Fortunately, our package includes their $27.75
breakfast buffet at the restaurant directly below our room! We filled
to the gills at breakfast yesterday, skipped lunch, and had dinner out!

After breakfast yesterday, we walked around the resort, saw most there
was to see, including the dolphins in their Dolphin Quest program
(minimum $199 for a half hour encounter, 20 minutes spent sharing 1
dolphin with 5 other people..)

Well, time to get ready for breakfast, and I’ll be back later with
yesterday’s activities outside the resort…

We got down to Hilo about 5:30pm, and guess which cruise ship was sitting in port.. Hey Steve, it’s the "Pride of America" for the third time! We seem to be following each other around the islands the past few days….

Then we saw the statue of King Kamehameha the Great in Hilo before we decided to grab a pizza at Pizza Hut for dinner and then make the 1h 45m trip back to the hotel. There are still 2 waterfalls in the Hilo area we would like to see, if we get the chance….

We would like to get back down to Hilo to tour the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory/plantation as well.

On Monday, we are planning a drive down the desolate west and south shores, to the black sands beach and other sights….

Some Pictures of the Flora we found on our walk to Akaka Falls

This last one was on someone’s property on the road to Akaka Falls. We took the picture on the way back to the Island Loop Road.

We drove down the east shore, all the way to Hilo, stopping at Akaka Falls on the way down.

We made the hike down to Akaka Falls, but it was a big climb back to this sign, so the hike to Kahuna Falls was declined, since many people said you did not get a good look at the falls from the viewpoint, anyway.

No, this is not Akaka Falls, it is one of the streams we crossed on the way to the falls, though, and it had a nice set of cascades, two here and one directly under the bridge.

Close up views of the two small falls above the footbridge to Akaka Falls.

This is Akaka Falls, 760 feet top to bottom. If you look at the top banner picture on the blog, you will see a picture of this falls on the left side as well. I think I like mine better

This is the plunge pool at Akaka Falls, anyone for high diving??