Hilo, Hawaii

yesterday, sweet diane (our lady on our intercom system) woke us up at 5:30 in the morning to tell us that we were pulling into hilo and that the international custom people would be coming onto the ship at 6.  like really?  my alarm was set for 6.... please don't wake me up prior to my alarm.  but i got up anyway at 6 and we got some breakfast and were SOOOOOOOOO excited to see land.  me and my group of friends had absolutely NO idea of what we were doing yesterday, we were just gonna wing it.  so we got off the ship and walked a little and then decided to grab a taxi and went into downtown old hilo.  we then got a FREE (how great is that?) bus and then went to rainbow falls.  it was pretty dried up but then when we hiked up the trail... we ran into fellow SAS'ers and found out that if you hiked to the back of Rainbow falls, there was a place you could go cliff jumping and there was a waterfall you could swim up to.  so naturally.... we hiked to the back of rainbow falls!  and we encountered cliffs that were 20 feet high about and we went cliff jumping!  and it was AWESOME!  talk about a rush!  after rainbow falls, we went into hilo and grabbed something to eat and then we went to the beach and just sat there teh rest of the night before coming back to the ship.  back at the ship we grabbed dinner and then went to the local bar across the street from the harbor and i met a lot of cool locals and what not.
today we woke up and went to a tour today with our lady suzy q that we met yestrday.  we went to a beach and then went to the hot water springs which is basically a pool in the middle of the beach that is hot because teh magma from the volcanoes heats it up.  and we were there for a while before we went to some shack and got THE BEST ice cream ever (i got kona mud slide which was like coffee ice cream with pieces of oreo cookies i think and some swirl in it) and some french fries which also were amazing!  after the shack, we went to Boiling points which is a bunch of little waterfalls and i went cliff jumping... AGAIN!  but this time they were like 40 feet and it was not nerve racking at all!  i just went up, counted to 3 and went!  and it was AWESOME! granted, my butt took a little bit of a hard hit cuz i landed on that instead of my feet but it was awesome!! we met some locals there too and the one girl lik einspired me to just go up there and jump without thinking and tahts exactly what i did and it was great.  today was probably my favorite day (considering we only had like 2 days though at land so far) but still.  it was awesome.  i met a bunch of people from the ship and everything so its fun. 
tonight we leave Hilo at 8 and make our way to honolulu.  stephanies birthday is the first day we are there so we dont know what we are doing yet.
but until next time!  see ya in honolulu!!
christine