My list of the top 12 activities I enjoyed the most continues down with my top four favorite activities:

4. The Catholic faith
I attempted to attend mass at St. Peter’s of the Sea Catholic Church, located just down the road from my townhouse in Kailua Kona. However, I ended up going a bit further down the road to St. Michael the Archangel Church.

The parish is known as the “The Church in the Tent” since their church was torn down because of age deterioration and damage from a 2006 earthquake. They are presently working to rebuild it, which once built, will resemble the former building that stood on the site for more than 150 years. It’s the first mass I’ve attended where the pastor competed with a nearby rooster for my attention. The pastor’s sermon won, which says how great of a job he did.

However, my interaction with the local Catholics didn’t end here. Another neat feature was the Painted Church in Captain Cook, an active parish whose church was erected in 1899. It’s absolutely gorgeous with funds raised through visitor donations and the sale of handcrafts, such as rosaries made out of wood native to the island.

I attend mass at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Arkansas so I was also excited to find a similarly-named church in Hawaii.

3. Beaches

The Big Island’s beaches were probably bumped up to the No. 3 position simply because I was finally able to see not one, but two sea turtles resting on a beach. I absolutely love turtles. The island’s beaches are made up of four different types of sand: Ili Ili (beach pebbles); green (Olivine Crystals); black (ground lava); and white (crushed shells, corals). I experienced all but the green sands — which I now truly regret.

2. Hawaii Volcano National Parks

Who doesn’t want to see an active volcano? While there, I saw the Thurston Lava Tube, the Steaming Bluff Overlook, steam vents as well as Halema’uma’u Crater (where lava boiled for 100 years in this crater within a crater). I hate that I didn’t get to the see the live lava flow — I now wish I had completed the hike there or taken a helicopter over.

1.  Coral Reef Adventures
I loved our morning boat ride that had us swimming in 300-foot deep water with spinner dolphins. I am not a great swimmer so the initial plunge into the ocean freaked me out until my aunts joined me (I was one of the first off the boat). It took several tries to find pods of dolphins to swim with — we first discovered a floating white bottle and a coconut — but when we did find the dolphins it was absolutely amazing.