Volcanoes National Park
This place deserves a blog post of its own because going there gives the impression you have been transported to another country - nay, planet - which is just as captivating as the other. We spent a day circumnavigating the island by car in order to get to this National Park which protects the active volcanic areas of the island, and has a visitors' centre at the brim of the caldera of Kīlauea, the newest and second highest volcano.
The crater is just huge, and in fact has a smaller crater within it, Halemaʻumaʻu, which itself is the size of a large quarry. The landscape is so barren it's almost lunar, and is scattered with steam vents. A road takes you down into the crater to the edge of Halemaʻumaʻu, with sulphur fumes rising ominously, which until recently used to be accompanied by lava. Further down the mountain, we were able to walk through an old lava tube which used to have lava gushing through it for years.
Round the island we made more historic stops, and visited Ralph and Arlita's daughter, Renée, my second-cousin-twice-removed, for dinner at a supposedly haunted steakhouse furnished with Old Western memorabilia - and some of the most generous portions of food I've ever seen.