Hawai’i Couples Trip 2026

Ryan and I went on a trip with some of Ryan’s swim team friends to the big island of Hawaii in September.

The night before we left for Hawaii, we got the news that a hurricane was headed straight to the island where we were going in the next few days. That made us pretty nervous, but we decided to just go anyways and see what happens! 

We flew in pretty early in the morning, which means we got to the hotel with just enough time to get dinner. 

Our first meal we ate was at a restaurant right on the beach- the sunset view was spectacular!

The second day we headed to the eastern side of the island- there were a lot of pretty views on the drive there:

Then we were supposed to drive down Banyan Drive, but ended up at Lili'uokalani Gardens instead. It was really pretty there!

This tree was as wide as our house!

My favorite part of this park was this:

It looked like a bunch of yellow flowers, but then they all started walking around and it seemed like the flowers had come to life! It was kind of magical.

Then we went to Kulaniapia Falls, where we were supposed to paddle board and swim at the bottom of the waterfall, but because of all the rain from the Hurricane Lowell we weren't allowed to, so we just hiked around instead (in the pouring rain). It was so pretty:

The whole group:

All of the foliage reminded me of Jurassic Park or something:

I really, really loved seeing that waterfall, but the worst part was that I got approximately 50 mosquito bites from that hike all over my legs and my arms. We made an emergency stop to the drugstore after that so I could get some cream for the bites.

After the waterfall we got some food at Zippy's, one of our friends most nostalgic restaurants. We had some good mochi malasadas and chicken!

Then we went to see Kilauea volcano- we had just missed a little sputter that morning, so all we had was some smoke, which I found very disappointing:

Then we were planning to hike a bit more around Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but they closed it early because of the hurricane, so we went to the black sand beach instead, Punalu'u. It was so cool to see black sand like that!

You gotta Vogue for the camera at beautiful places like this:

Group Picture:

All the ladies:

All the guys:

The next morning us ladies planned to go to the beach, but all of the public ones were closed for the hurricane, so we went on a beach hunt. We tried this tiny one that was pretty much in the middle of a neighborhood, but it was not a good beach spot. It did have cool sand though- like a mix between regular tan sand and the black sand:

Then we went to a beach near a hotel, but it was crazy rocky, so were mostly just 50 feet back from it on a patch of grass and we read a bit.

While we were beach searching, the men went scuba diving. They saw a coqui frog, dolphins, and lots of fish: