The Big Island of Hawaii

We woke up at 5:00 in the morning to get ready to go to the airport. We checked in, returned our rental car, and waited for our flight to leave. We arrived in Kona, quickly got our luggage and got our new rental car. Unfortunately, we discovered that the rental company we got the car from has an extra charge for drivers under 25. That was annoying, but since it was only for one day, it wasn't a big deal.
We began by going to see the temple. That was a nice place to begin and really the only reason I wanted to go to the big island. We walked around the grounds and took pictures and then went to the City of Refuge. That was a little way down the coast and was a nice drive. The City of Refuge is an old Hawaiian settlement. In early Hawaiian culture, there were certain things that you did that was punishable by death (even simple things like crossing the shadow of a ruler). But, Hawaiians were fair. They didn't want to execute their people for such little trespasses but didn't want to anger the gods. No one could be killed on holy ground and so each person could flee to a city of refuge. If they made it before they were caught, they were safe and could live for a certain amount of time in that place of refuge until their sin was forgiven and they could return to their homes. While there, we saw about 8 or 9 green sea turtles. One was basking in the sun and the others we saw swimming around.
Next, we went north to the King's Shops where we saw some petroglyphs. They weren't extremely old, just from the 19th century, but it was interesting to see. From there, we went back to the airport to wait for our flight to Maui. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go see the volcano, it was too far away.
We had an hour and a half lay-over in Honolulu before arriving in Maui. We had a reservation with Budget, but they don't allow drivers under the age of 25. Too bad they didn't mention that when I made the reservation, so we had to go back to the airport. On the ride back, I prayed for a miracle, I prayed that we could find a rental company that wasn't too expensive and didn't have the underage fee, otherwise I didn't know what we would do.
I checked Thrifty, but they had a daily charge. Kandice checked with Enterprise, but all they had was a van that would cost $90/day. We say down nearby to check our options. We were only sitting there for a few minutes when my miracle happened. Just when it seemed like we had no hope, the guy at Enterprise told us that a car had just been returned, right then. We took it, of course.
We drove to our hostel. We had to wait an hour for the attendant to come so we could get into our room. While we waited, I was having second thoughts about our hostel. Luckily, we had a private room with a lock. The people are loud, guys were too close and the bathrooms, though they locked, were co-ed. I learned another lesson for hostelling: make sure girls/guys bathrooms and bedroom are separated, at least on different floors if not in different buildings like the one on Oahu, find out more about the atmosphere if you can, and finally go internationally affiliated if you can. Luckily, that hostel was only for one night.