Sleeping bad was not a good enough excuse to lay in bed late. Before the sunrise (which was pathetic btw) we were up on deck 12. After eating a good (buffet) breakfast, we went back to the cabin to put on our hiking shoes. We were off the ship at ~8:00, at the airport car rental at ~8:30 and we made it to the park a little before 10:00. Because of the rain (from time to time it was literally pouring) we started questioning the timing of our visit. We kept going especially because this was the only opportunity we had to visit the park and we didn't have an alternate plan anyway.

They gave us relatively bad news at the visitor center: (1) the active lava flow was not visible from the trails in the park and (2) the rain would follow us around during our visit. A wrong turn at the the Visitor Center took us to the Steam Vents. We didn't find anything interesting there, but - the truth is - we only spent around 10 minutes. We turned and headed toward Kīlauea Iki Crater to hike down to the lava pool. In the first part the trail winds down through a rain forest. The drizzle forced us to put on the ponchos, not to protect us as much as to protect the camera. The second part of the trail goes across the black lava, which (they say) is still steaming from the 1959 eruption. Parts of the frozen lava lake are wavy - I am not sure how the waves were created by temperature differences during the freezing process. Some waves are cracked - most likely because the change in density between lave molted and frozen states. The vegetation started growing everywhere in the cracks. The third part of the trail follows a series of switchbacks leading up through the rainforest.

The trail ends close to the entrance into Thurston Lava Tube - a sort of circular cave the lava used to come to the surface. Part of the tube is illuminated and (almost) visitor friendly. The rest of the tube can be seen only with a flashlight. We hooked up with three other people from the cruise (Kathleen, Lita, and Daren) to venture in darkness. Only a few minor obstacles stoond in the way before the tube ended abruptly. Of course, we took a few heroic pictures that will forever witness our act of courage. The tube didn't seem as long on our way back, but finding our car was a challenge. We had a partial heart attack before realizing that we left it at Kīlauea Iki Crater Overlook, not in the Thurston Lava Tube parking lot.

It was past 1:00 pm when we finally found the car. It was pretty clear that driving the rest of the Crater Rim Drive and the Chain of Craters Road was not feasible. Since we already hiked in a crater, possibly seeing more of the same was less tempting than seeing where the lava meets the ocean. The Chain of Craters Road must have been rebuilt several times because lava wept out everything in its path to the ocean. The weather was better on the coast; the sun was still hiding behind thick clouds, but it didn't rain at least. We walked by the point where the park services closed the road; however we didn't make it to the point where the lava decided to cross the street.

Driving back was less exciting, especially after we literally entered in the clouds and we couldn't see much around us. It rained all the way to Hilo. We made it back to the ship at around 5 pm - 30 minutes earlier than we were supposed to. During the day they fixed the light in our bathroom, so we could take a shower. We had dinner at Papa's Italian Kitchen, where they poured food on us in such quantity that they had to trash more than half of it. After the 9:30 show (Soul Rockin' Nights), we went to bed and slept like two rocks.

• Diamond Head
• Driving around Oahu
• Pearl Harbor
• Volcanoes National Park
• Road to Hana
• Haleakala and Makena
• North Kohala
• North Kauai
• Waimea Canyon