There is a simple and tragic reason why downtown Hilo looks so appealingly low-key, with its modest streets and wooden stores: all the buildings that stood on the seaward side of Kamehameha Avenue were destroyed by the two tsunami of 1946 and 1960. After 1960, no attempt was made to rebuild "little Tokyo," which had housed Hilo's predominantly Japanese population, and the seafront is now occupied by a succession of pleasant gardens. The story is told in the high-tech Pacific Tsunami Museum , on Kamehameha Avenue at Kalakuaua Street (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; $5). A scale model shows how the city looked before the 1946 disaster; contemporary footage and personal letters bring home the full impact of the tragedy. The section devoted to the wave of 1960 is even more poignant. Locals had several hours' warning that it was on its way, but many flocked to the seafront to watch it come in; photos show them waiting excitedly for the cataclysm that was about to engulf them.

The focus of the two-part Lyman Museum at 276 Haili St (Mon-Sat 9am-4.30pm; $7) is the original 1830s Mission House , furnished in dark koa wood, which belonged to Calvinist missionaries David and Sarah Lyman. The museum next door starts with a fascinating set of ancient weapons and then documents Hawaii's various ethnic groups, including the Portuguese shipped in in 1878 from the overpopulated but similarly volcanic Azores, whose braginha became the ukelele.

A couple of miles up Waianuenue Avenue, at Rainbow Falls , just to the right of the road, a spectacular wide waterfall plummets 100ft across the mouth of a huge cavern. Continue another two miles to reach the bubbling, foaming pools known as the Boiling Pots .

Downtown Hilo

• Downtown Hilo

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