After leaving Maui and the port of Kahului the ship set course for Hawaii, the big island and the port of Hilo. We now realized that we had been lucky to get cabins on the "good" side of the ship. We had a full view of the island as we came in to the port. After breakfast we got to see the crew practice launching the lifeboats and some emergency drills.
We had nothing planned for the day so we just took a shuttle to one of the the local malls and the Hilo Hattie store. After that we found a local bus to take us down to the little downtown area which was much nicer. We decided to go and see what is called the Rainbow Falls which is a 2-2½ mile walk up a hill. Unfortunately there was not much flow in the Wailuku River so it was not much of a water fall at this time. After walking back down to the city we got a taxi back to the ship for some relaxing and the next cruise to Kona on the other side of the island.