Hawaiʻi Island is larger than the other five put together, and five days is only enough if you refuse to cover the same ground twice.
The measured problem is specific. Kona airport to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is 2 hours 30 minutes on our own drive times. Base in Kona and day-trip the volcano and you have spent five hours in the car to arrive tired and leave before dark, which is the half worth seeing. Base in Kona the whole time and skip the volcano and you have flown to this island for the wrong reasons.
So this plan is one-way across the island: two nights on the Kona side, two near Volcano, and home from Hilo. Hilo has no mainland nonstop, which sounds like a problem and is not. It runs 17.5 flights a day to Honolulu, so the connection exists whenever you want it, and taking it saves you the 1 hour 53 minute drive back to Kona on your last morning.
What this week covers
- The crater after dark, which needs you to be sleeping nearby
- A manta ray night snorkel off the Kona coast
- Black sand at Punaluʻu on the way across rather than as a detour
- One crossing of the island instead of two
The driving this plan involves
Measured rather than estimated: every figure below comes from two routing engines run over OpenStreetMap, with the slower of the two published. Free flow with no traffic model, so treat them as a floor.
Moving days
- Kailua-Kona to Volcanoes NP 2 hr 32 min, 99.2 miles
Every one of these is a checkout, a move and a check-in, so budget the day around it rather than around the travel time.
Day trips from Kailua-Kona
| To | Each way | Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Kona Airport (KOA) | 18 min | 8.1 |
| Waikōloa | 42 min | 25.4 |
| Waimea | 1 hr 5 min | 39.5 |
| Mauna Kea Visitor Station | 1 hr 29 min | 55.1 |
| Waipiʻo Valley lookout | 1 hr 43 min | 61.7 |
| Punaluʻu black sand beach | 1 hr 51 min | 67.5 |
| Hilo | 1 hr 55 min | 78 |
| Volcanoes NP | 2 hr 32 min | 99.2 |
Each way, so double it for a round trip. Every measured route on every island is on the drive times page, free to quote and downloadable as CSV.
Land at Kona and stay west
Based in Kailua-Kona
The Kona side is dry, sunny and where the water is. Do nothing ambitious on arrival day.
- Afternoon
KOA to Kailua-Kona
Eighteen minutes on our measured drive. The airport is open-air and the lava plain either side of the road is your first look at what this island is made of.
- Late afternoon
Groceries, then the water
Shop once for the whole Kona half. You are moving to Volcano on day three, where the shops are smaller and further apart.
- Sunset
Kailua-Kona seafront
The town faces west, which on this island is the side the sun sets on. Easy first evening, and everything is walkable from the pier.
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