Evening Volcano Explorer Kona Pick-Up in Hilo, HI

Would definitely recommend the Secrets of Puna Tour! Was able to see some beautiful scenery including lava fields, a black sand beach, beautiful cliffs and several sea turtles! Our guide was Marcus and he was FANTASTIC!!!! He was super friendly and very accommodating. He didn't rush us at all and made the trip very enjoyable...he was just go with the flow! Would definitely ensure you wear closed toe shoes as they're required and just know that "real" bathrooms aren't available often and the porta potties didn't always have toilet paper so you may want to bring some with you. BUT don't let that deter you...this was one of the best tours of the week! Make sure you get Marcus as your guide!

It was an excellent experience, The tour guide was friendly and very knowledgeable about the island.

Ok, so Ray is a wealth of information, and Sam is just as informative. We did a Captain Cook snorkeling and Coffee tour in Kona, Hawaii, and my wife was the happiest I’ve seen her. I am here to say Wow, she and I will do it again.

My wife and I took this van day tour as a Holland America cruise excursion. The title of the excursion was Hawaii Volcanoes National Park & Waterfall Explorer. We were picked up from the cruise terminal. Greeted by Hunter, he would be our driver, and our tour guide. Let me tell you right away that Hunter was great! Both as a driver, and especially as a tour guide. He is a pro. A great speaker. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with him. Our van tour started with an informative drive through Hilo. We did visit a couple of wonderful waterfalls, then Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Including the crater, steam vents, the visitors center, and then the lava tube. While by the crater we stopped for a nice picnic lunch. I think this ended up being around a 6-7hr tour. It went fast. This was our last excursion while visiting the Hawaiian islands on this cruise. And our last tour ended up being our best. Hunter did a great job. I would certainly do this tour again.

I booked the Waterfalls and Volcano National Park Tour through Princess Cruises. We docked in Hilo at 8:00 and met our tour guide, Victor, in the terminal at 8:20. There were 12 of us in a modern van. Victor was so warm and personable, and made us all feel instantly comfortable! We spent over 7 hours touring different waterfalls and looking at the volcanos. He made the history of Hilo come to life! I learned so much! We had lunch in the afternoon, plenty of bathroom breaks, and an opportunity to pick up some souvenirs. The tour itinerary was good……but Victor was fabulous!!! I highly recommend any tour that he is leading!!

Secrets of Puna sounded like a wonderful excursion offered by our cruise. The trip started out wonderfully, with a few stops showing areas of past lava flow along the coastline. The second half of the trip was supposed to give us the availability of snorkeling and shopping. Well, we had 45 minutes at the hotel where the tour agency was located where snorkling was off a boat dock and shopping was at the hotel gift shop. Courtney, our tour guide, did a good job, but most tourists don't ay good money to go to a hotel gift shop.

We stayed at the Grand Naniloa and attempted to rent kayaks every day of our stay. Every day we were told that we couldn’t due to “staffing issues” and to come back after 10am on Wednesday. We even checked on Tuesday to see if we needed to make reservations for Wednesday (the last day of our trip) and were assured that we didn’t need reservations just show up “anytime after 10am”. We showed up at 12:30 and were told we couldn’t rent a kayak even though there were 3 people at the desk because the one man that told us to come “anytime after 10” was going home soon. It would have been really helpful if he had said “anytime after 10am” meant 10-12pm. TLDR- even after asking everyday we still missed the 2 hour window they were willing to rent kayaks during the week. No one there could have cared any less that they’d given us the run around all week. Truly horrible service. Hilo ocean adventures is just down the road and the staff is actually nice and willing to do their jobs. Stop there first, I wish I had.