Hilo, Hawaii: The Island's Best-Kept Secret Is a Sea Turtle, a Poke Bowl, and a Papaya That Will Change Your Life

Carlsmith Beach Park: Where the Turtles Live

Carlsmith Beach Park sits on the eastern edge of Hilo, tucked behind a residential neighborhood in a way that makes it feel like a local secret even though it is a public park. The water here is unlike anything I have seen in Hawaii — a series of natural pools where freshwater springs from the volcanic rock below meet the warm Pacific, creating a turquoise clarity that is almost unreal. The rocky bottom is visible from the surface. The water is warm. And in it, unhurried and entirely unbothered, are the honu.

Hawaiian green sea turtles — honu in Hawaiian — are a protected species, and at Carlsmith they are simply residents. They rest on the rocky ledges. They drift through the shallows. They surface for air a few feet from where you are standing. There are no tour operators here, no glass-bottom boats, no admission fee. You walk down to the water and there they are, living their lives, and you are simply a visitor in their space.

The experience of watching a sea turtle move through clear water — that slow, ancient grace — is one of those things that recalibrates something in you. It is not dramatic. It is quiet. And that is exactly the point.

At Carlsmith — the turquoise water behind me is where the turtles swim

The Hilo Farmers Market: Papaya, Pineapple, and the Best Produce on Earth

The Hilo Farmers Market runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the corner of Kamehameha Avenue and Mamo Street, and it is one of the best farmers markets in the United States. I say that without qualification. The volcanic soil of the Big Island produces fruit of a quality and intensity that is simply not available anywhere else, and the market is where you encounter it at its peak.

The papaya here — specifically the Solo papaya, grown in the mineral-rich volcanic earth of the Big Island — is a different fruit from anything you have eaten before. It is sweeter, more fragrant, more complex, with a silky texture and a flavor that is almost floral. You eat it with a squeeze of lime and it tastes like the island itself. The pineapple is equally revelatory — none of the acidity or toughness of mainland pineapple, just pure sweetness and fragrance.

Beyond the fruit, the market overflows with orchids, local honey, macadamia nuts, fresh-cut coconut, Kona coffee, and vegetables grown in the shadow of Mauna Kea. Come early, bring cash, and plan to eat your way through it. This is not a tourist attraction. It is where Hilo feeds itself.

Dining in Hilo: Jackie Rey's Ohana Grill

Jackie Rey's Ohana Grill is the kind of place that defines a town's food identity. It is warm, unhurried, and deeply local — a Hilo institution that has been feeding the community for years with cooking that takes the extraordinary ingredients of the Big Island seriously without trying to be anything other than what it is. The name says it all: ohana means family in Hawaiian, and that is exactly how the place feels.

The menu is a love letter to the island — fresh fish, local produce, tropical fruit, and the kind of comfort food that makes sense in a place this lush and this warm. The kitchen has access to some of the best ingredients on earth and treats all of it with respect. There is a simplicity to the cooking that is actually very difficult to achieve: it requires knowing when to get out of the way of the ingredients and let them speak for themselves.

Dinner at Jackie Rey's is not a splurge in the way that resort dining is a splurge. It is a meal that feels earned — by the day you spent in the water, by the morning at the market, by the general rightness of being somewhere that has not been optimized for tourism. It is the kind of restaurant that makes you want to come back the next night.

The Booch Bar: Living Food for Living Folks

The Booch Bar on Keawe Street is one of Hilo's most beloved spots — and once you walk in, it is immediately obvious why. Their motto is "Living Food for Living Folks," and they mean it. The kombucha is brewed locally using Big Island Booch, flavored with tropical fruits and botanicals grown nearby, and served on tap in a space that feels genuinely community-oriented rather than trend-chasing. Local art lines the walls. The vibe is unhurried and warm.

After a morning at Carlsmith in the sun and salt water, a cold glass of kombucha from The Booch Bar is one of the more restorative things you can put in your body. The flavors here — hibiscus, ginger, passion fruit, turmeric, lilikoi — are not the generic kombucha flavors you find at a Whole Foods. They taste like they were made by someone who cares deeply about fermentation and about the place they live in. Because they were. They also serve food — breakfast, lunch, and a menu that leans into the same local-and-alive philosophy as the drinks.

Stop in for a late morning drink after the farmers market. Order something with lilikoi. Sit down. There is no rush here.

The Poke: Fresh Ahi From the Local Market That Will Ruin You for Everything Else

I need to talk about the poke.

Poke in Hawaii is not the same thing as poke on the mainland. This is not a controversial statement — it is simply a fact of geography and freshness. The ahi tuna in Hilo was in the ocean yesterday. It has not been frozen, shipped, or handled by anyone who does not know exactly what they are doing with it. When it is cut, seasoned with sea salt and sesame and a little soy, and placed in a container at the local market, it is at the absolute peak of what fish can be.

The poke from the local market in Hilo is the kind of food that makes you stop mid-bite and just sit with it for a moment. The texture is silky and firm at the same time. The flavor is clean and deep and oceanic in the best possible way. You eat it standing up, out of a container, probably in a parking lot, and it is one of the best things you have ever tasted.

This is not a restaurant experience. It is a market experience. And it is one of the primary reasons to go to Hilo.

Tropical Flora: The Garden That Surrounds You

Click any flower to learn more

One of the things that surprises people about Hilo is the flora. You expect turtles and poke and rain. You do not necessarily expect to be stopped in your tracks by a flower. But Hilo's warm, wet climate produces tropical plants of extraordinary beauty — anthuriums and heliconias and bromeliads and hibiscus growing wild along roadsides and in gardens and spilling over lava rock walls. The Big Island is one of the world's great botanical environments, and in Hilo, the evidence is everywhere.

Red Anthurium

Heliconia

Chenille Plant

Bromeliad

Yellow Hibiscus

The Vibe: Quiet, Rural, Completely Itself

Hilo is not a resort town. It is not trying to be. The downtown is a collection of historic storefronts along Kamehameha Avenue, many of them occupied by local businesses that have been there for decades. There are no chain restaurants on the main drag. There are no souvenir shops selling plastic leis. There are hardware stores and fish markets and a bookshop and a bakery and a coffee roaster, and the people who run them are from here.

The pace of Hilo is slow in a way that is not manufactured. It is slow because the people who live here have chosen a life that is not organized around productivity or optimization. They grow things. They fish. They cook. They know their neighbors. The town has a slightly rural, slightly rough-around-the-edges quality that is, in the context of Hawaiian tourism, almost radical. Nobody is performing paradise for you here. The paradise is just there, in the background, doing its thing.

For women who have spent years in the noise of modern life — the notifications, the obligations, the relentless forward motion — Hilo offers something genuinely rare: a place that is quiet not because it has been engineered to be quiet, but because it simply is. The rain comes. The jungle grows. The turtles swim. The market opens on Wednesday morning. And none of it requires your participation or your approval.

The Scenery: Volcanic, Lush, and Genuinely Stunning

The Big Island is the youngest of the Hawaiian islands, and it shows. The landscape around Hilo is raw and dramatic in a way that the older, more eroded islands are not. Lava fields stretch to the horizon. Waterfalls drop from cliffs into pools surrounded by ferns the size of trees. The ocean is not the gentle turquoise of Maui — it is darker, more powerful, crashing against black volcanic rock with a force that reminds you that this island is still being made.

Rainbow Falls, just minutes from downtown Hilo, is a 80-foot waterfall that drops into a circular pool surrounded by ancient lava rock and wild ginger. Akaka Falls, about 15 miles north, is one of the most dramatic waterfalls in the state — a 442-foot plunge through a lush gorge that feels like something from another world. The drive up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, about 30 miles south, takes you through landscapes that shift from tropical jungle to high-altitude desert to active lava fields.

Hilo is also one of the rainiest cities in the United States, and the rain is responsible for all of this green. It comes in warm, brief bursts that leave the air smelling of earth and flowers. After rain, the waterfalls run harder, the jungle deepens, and the light through the clouds over the bay is something you will want to photograph and then realize you cannot capture.

Sunset from the cliffs above Hilo Bay

Kīlauea: The Island Is Still Being Made

About a week after we left Hilo, Kīlauea erupted.

We had driven through Hawaii Volcanoes National Park during our trip — walked the crater rim, watched the steam vents, stood at the edge of the Kīlauea caldera and looked down into the darkness. The landscape there is unlike anything else on earth: miles of hardened black lava stretching to the horizon, the air smelling faintly of sulfur, the ground still warm in places underfoot. It is not a comfortable place. It is a humbling one.

Standing on the rim of an active volcano and knowing that the ground beneath you is the newest land on the planet — land that did not exist a hundred years ago, or fifty, or ten — does something to your sense of scale. The problems you carried onto the plane feel smaller. The island does not care about your schedule or your to-do list. It is busy making itself.

When the eruption happened the week after our trip, I was not surprised. I was grateful. Grateful we had been there to see it in its quiet phase, and grateful that it reminded me — from a safe distance — that the world is still alive in ways that have nothing to do with us.

Where to Stay: Airbnbs in the Jungle

Hilo does not have major chain hotels, and this is one of its greatest assets. The accommodation scene here is dominated by Airbnbs and small inns, many of them set in the lush jungle gardens that surround the town, on cliffs above the ocean, or in beautifully restored plantation-era homes. The quality is remarkably high.

Waking up in a private jungle cottage with bird of paradise blooming outside your window, rain pattering on a tin roof, and the sound of tropical birds in the trees is an experience that no Marriott can replicate. Many of the Airbnbs in the Hilo area have outdoor showers, private pools or hot tubs, and gardens that feel like a botanical park. Some are perched on lava cliffs above the ocean. Some are surrounded by macadamia orchards. All of them have the quality of a place that was designed by someone who actually loves where they live.

Budget accordingly — the good ones book up. But the price point is generally far more reasonable than the resort areas of Maui or Oahu, and the experience is incomparably more personal. You are not a guest at a hotel. You are a temporary inhabitant of a very beautiful place.

Our VRBO — ocean view from the balcony

The view from our balcony — tropical palms, the bay, and nothing but ocean