Inn at Volcano

Inn at Volacno

We spent two nights at The Inn at Volcano, part of The Chalet Kilauea Collection, and it was a wonderful place to stay. Located just minutes from the entrance to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. There are not many places to stay in Volcano Village, it is a small town, I believe most people stay in Hilo and drive down to the Volcanoes Park. I would highly recommend staying in Volcano Village instead. It is a quant town located in the rain forest and this Inn is a gem versus Hilo which is a city and the hotels are more tourist traps. It only takes a couple of minutes to the National Park and your park access is good for a couple of days. Weather around the Volcano, due the rainforest, is extremely variable, thus if the weather is rainy you can just come back a bit later to see if things cleared up. The hotel has a beautiful garden out front with a koi pond. It also has a communal room with free internet access on their computer or free wireless. The continental breakfast in their nice dining room was very reasonably priced. The continental breakfast included great fresh fruit, local coffee, tea, cereal, bagels, a wide selection of local Hawaiian bread and even homemade bread pudding one of the mornings. We stayed in the Garden Room which was very nice. The bathroom was newly renovated. The room was very large, even had a reading room. Out on the covered patio there was a small seating area along with a microwave and oven.

Of course the main thing to do is the volcano. Due to the vog (volcano fog) from the large vent that opened in 2008 a lot of the rim road is closed due to high sulfur dioxide content in the vog. The movie at the welcome center was interesting and the lookout at the Jaggar Museum offers a great view of the crater. We heard that at night you can see the crater glow. The chain of craters dive was spectacular. There are some really neat craters along the way. Once again the road is closed temporarily when it reaches the coast due to vog. So we did not see where the new lava flows had taken over the road. Back up in the rainforest we walked through the Thurston Lava Tube. There are with several good restaurants in Volcano. We got take out from Thai Thai which was super authentic, the owners go back to Thailand for a month every year. The other night we ate out at Kaiwe Kitchen Café, which had great margaritas and creative and delicious pizzas. We ate lunch at the Lava Rock Café; a modest diner setting with a big menu. We had some great burgers and a fantastic peanut butter pie. Our local friends told us Kilauea Lodge & Restaurant was fantastic, but it was a little pricey and we were not in the mood for the German/Continental Menu.

More like a B&B than a hotel

Since there aren’t a lot of hotel options near Volcano National Park we opted to stay here. I would suggest you call ahead to make sure you’re getting one of the suites with a bathroom in your room. We did this and were satisfied, but I did see other rooms that had a community bathroom. The breakfast service was nice with many selections for the $6 we paid. The outdoor scenery was very lovely with a pond and quite places to sit and read if you prefer

good value

good value and locationl