Noordam in Hilo

Looking online for information about Hilo cruise port pre-cruise I didn’t find much other than that it was not in town and that there was supposed to be a free shuttle to Walmart. The advice was to book an excursion as there otherwise wouldn’t be much of anything to do. They were wrong though. As it turned out there was a free shuttle to a farmer’s market in town and hop on hop off bus tours available at the port so there was actually something there to do last minute for people without prior plans. The Walmart shuttle was not running that day. The ship offered 4 excursions that went to Volcanoes National Park. The longest tour was too expensive to consider. Of the other three, two specifically said people would not see lava on that tour and the third did not say one way or the other whether we would see lava or not. We chose that one on the hopes that we would. Otherwise we would have chosen the one that said it included a walk through a lava tube rather than the one that went to a botanical garden.

pathway across a lake at the garden

It often seems like the smaller the ship the less organized they are when it comes to sending out the shore excursions and just generally getting people off the ship. While Noordam isn’t the smallest ship out there it is certainly nowhere near the biggest. Definitely not the best organized. Unlike prior cruises we’ve taken, there were no paper excursion tickets on this ship. Shore excursion tickets have gone digital in the Holland America app. We got to the entrance to the meeting point about 15 minutes early, but the line was long and slow moving. Eventually we made our way through the line and acquired our stickers, but by then it was past the time to check in at 8:30, though not yet quite time for our scheduled 8:45 departure. We went into the theater to wait along with everyone else anticipating a variety of excursions going out that morning.

steam in the crater at Kilauea

They finally called for our excursion after 9:00. The days of someone from the crew waiting while holding up a paddle with the group’s excursion number to lead the group out to their bus are long gone. They send you out on your own to find it. So why they bother grouping people up there rather than just sending everyone to an outside meeting place is beyond me except when it’s a very early excursion meeting before the boat docks or at a tender port where they send the whole excursion group out on the same tender.

volcano info at Volcanos National Park

Out in the port building a row of signs for various excursions lined up in front of rows of benches. It took some time for everyone to find the signs, the right group, then find out that the excursion providers out there needed to scan the e-tickets, which had not previously been mentioned by anyone. It’s a good idea to screenshot those tickets so that if you need to show it somewhere the wi-fi doesn’t reach and there’s no cell service you can still pull it up in your photos. That works well when using a digital boarding pass at the start of the cruise too. By the time we finally got out to the busses the excursion left over half an hour later than the posted time, but according to our driver the bus was actually supposed to leave the port at 8:30 am, which was the time we were told to be at the onboard meeting location. Had they just had us meet in the port where we ended up looking for the sign for our group anyway that definitely would have saved some time.

steam in the crater

We had an excellent guide. A local Hawaiian who lived partway between the town and the volcano. He was quite informative telling us all about the local fauna and flora, places we passed along the way, and a bit about the area’s homes and people as well as things tourists could see and do if they were to return for a longer visit. He also mentioned the island’s 5 volcanos, some of which we could see both from and on the way to Kilauea. In the winter some of the volcanos are topped in snow, something most people definitely don’t associate with Hawaii.

sign near the crater at Kilauea

On the way up to Kilauea the two mid-sized busses of our excursion traveled together, but after we got there the other one left first. We definitely got the better of the two on this tour. Besides having an excellent native guide while the other bus driver wasn’t, our bus also didn’t have as much of a time crunch since it did not have to be back in time for a second tour like the other one did. The time at each stop was still a bit constricted partly due to the late departure and partly because not enough time was allotted in the first place at the crater. Ship’s excursions do often tend to skimp on the amount of time allowed for their attractions.

guide’s photo of erupting volcano

Apparently lava comes and goes at that crater so sometimes people see it there and sometimes they don’t, which is probably why the tour description didn’t say whether we would see any or not. Unfortunately it just had steam during our visit. We had hoped to see lava in the crater. The museum at the crater was fenced off and closed due to damage from a previous eruption, but we wouldn’t have had time to see it anyway. Since we couldn’t get any lava pictures of our own, the driver offered to share some that he had on his phone. I think it’s from Kilauea since it’s the most active, but Mauna Loa does erupt sometimes so that one is also a possibility.

steam vent on Kilauea

After the crater we stopped off to see some steam vents just down the road a bit from the crater, followed by a brief visit to a visitors center. I saw a couple geese by the road as we drove up to the volcano.

nene (internet photo)

The visitors center identified them as nene, distant descendants of some wayward Canadian geese that ended up in Hawaii half a million years ago. They have evolved into non-aquatic and non-migratory birds with shorter wings and less webbing in their feet for easier walking on old lava flows.

pathway across the lake at the garden

On the way to the garden we drove down a road winding through a row of banyan trees planted in the past by various different celebrities and famous people. The road passed by a small white sand beach, a rarity in an area where beaches are normally the black sand of volcanic lava rock. The guide did not say if that white sand was naturally occurring or imported as white sand often is on Hawaiian beaches that have it. There was a great view of the ship in port from that beach.

pagoda on the lake

The botanical garden turned out to be more of a Japanese park with bridges and pagodas along pathways meandering through ponds and trees rather than the sort of botanical garden with a variety of plants that have plaques or signs identifying the various different species growing there. A narrow road separated the park from the bay. It was quite a lovely park, and right on the shoreline of the bay. A few people were fishing and one had a couple dogs on a small beach. On the other side of the street just a little way down the road a long bridge stretched out to a tiny island called Coconut Island.

statue at the garden

That was the last scheduled stop, but the guide took a bit of a detour to drop a few people in town, and take another round through the banyan trees for a brief photo stop through the bus windows by the white sand beach for anyone who wanted a photo of the ship – something the other bus would not have had time to do.

lake at the garden

Overall it was a nice excursion, but it could have been improved with better planning on the ship and a bit more time allotted for the park as well as at the crater. The guide was one of the better ones that we’ve had as far as excursion guides go. Guides can definitely make or break an excursion. We’ve had both good and bad ones over time.

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