I'm trying to decide which way to see lava on the Big Island. I'm wondering if any of you have experience with either and can make some recommendations.

Thanks in advance,
-karen

To really SEE Big Island, nothing will top a helicopter tour. You will see valleys, waterfalls, inside caldera, bubbling lava etc that you simply can't see from a boat. If you want to see vog where the lava flows into the ocean and black sand beaches, and cliffs [which you will also see in helicopter], boat will work. Also, you can see the magnificence of Parker Ranch and how the land changes from wet and green to dry and brown.

Blue Hawaiian 2 hour tour is what we did. It wasn't cheap - but then who wants cheap and helicopter tour in same sentence?? It was the highlight of our 14 day trip in 2006.

Deb

This is the one

We did ecostar and it was a bit scary for about 30 seconds and then wow!

http://www.bluehawaiian.com/bigislan...d_spectacular/

I agree with Deb. We did the same tour last December. We saw little rivers of lava flowing into the ocean, but it seemed like it would be a proverbial crapshoot as to whether you could see through the steam on a boat. It could have been cool, or it could have been a disappointment - it was hard to tell.

Do the full island tour and see both the volcanoes (so cool!) and the cliffs and waterfalls. We loved it, and though it was expensive, it was one of the best things we've ever done on vacation.

We're going to Kauai and taking the helicopter tour there, so were thinking of the boat on the BI, but it sounds like you both had such a good time that maybe we should do two helicopter tours.

Can I ask you about your photos? Did you get glare from the windows on the photos that you took? I found a company that flies with the doors off in order to avoid this.

I had no problems with glare. We were lucky, we were in the front seats along side the pilot. Blue Hawaiian [maybe they all do] does a video while you are flying. It had the pilots narration, music, and you can hear the conversation inside the copter. It isn't hollywood quality, but we love having it.

We couldn't have afforded to fly twice, but we were thrilled with the flight over the lava, flying into the valley and seeing the waterfalls so close you could almost touch them.

Doorless, not so much for me.

Deb

Here is link to some pictures that I took inflight. These were taken with a disposable underwater camera, so the quality isn't great, but it wasn't due to the windows [I don't think].

http://picasaweb.google.com/DebitNM/...tober2006Part1

Deb

LOL! I was just looking at those pictures and there is some reflectionn, in fact, I captioned one of them indicating that I could see myself in picture. But the other pictures should show you that most of them were fine.

Deb