Adventures & Extreme Tours ~ Big Island, Hawaii
Bike Volcano Country
Map a course and head out to explore Kilauea on the two Trek mountain bikes included with your Volcano Mist Cottage vacation rental. Not sure where to go and what to see? Then leave the details to the interpretive guides at BikeVolcano. They currently offer two amazing adventures: Bike to Pele – an 18 mile summit-to-sea tour that descends through Kilauea’s east rift zone and ends at sunset on an ocean lookout where you can watch an active lava flow collide with cool ocean water and explode into a plume of debris-laden steam, and Bike Hawaii Volcanoes National Park – a tour through a variety of micro climates including lush rainforests, dynamic lava landscapes, huge craters, steaming vents and lava tubes that ends with an optional wine tasting at Volcano Winery.
Helicopter Tours
Visitors to Hawai’i can Feel the Heat of a volcanic eruption and molten lava from the relative safety of a chartered helicopter or boat. Erupting more or less continuously since 1983, Kilauea has been especially active in the past two years and Pele’s rivers of fire have been entering the sea at a very high volume. Paradise Helicopters, Sunshine Helicopters, Blue Hawaiian and Safari offers a variety of tours from different locations and can take you from the volcano summit to the ocean with side trips to gorgeous waterfalls not easily witnessed from any other method of travel. Ask for a ‘doors-off’ flight for a once-in-a-lifetime, extreme sensory experience.
Boat Tours
Lava Boat tours are a unique new and adventurous method of experiencing the dramatic collision of lava and ocean water. Several boat companies including Lava Ocean Adventures, Lono Adventures and Lava Roy, are equipped to provide passengers with a front row seat to witness fingers of lava dropping like blood red waterfalls into the ocean and creating an incredible and audible hissing match with regular firecracker bombs exploding into the steaming plumes. Tours depart from Isaac Hale Beach Park in Hilo. However, lava flows on its own timetable and determines its own path, so check with the Park Service or the lava boat companies directly before booking your adventure in Paradise.
Golf on a Volcano
Volcano Golf Course is open to the public and is located on the rim of the active Kilauea caldera on P’i’i Mauna Drive (off Hwy 11 at the 30 mile marker). The 18 hole course is a par 72, with 6,547 yards of playing area and lies in the cool highlands 4,000 feet above sea level, with the dramatic backdrop including both Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The quaint and low-key clubhouse offers great breakfast fare and locally popular plate lunches. An added bonus is the fact that the endangered Nene Goose is a frequent visitor to the manicured fairways.