The Big Island spans an extraordinary range of climatic zones: snow covers the 13,800-foot summit of Mauna Kea, which ranks among the world’s premier sites for stargazing, while deserts, rain forests and waterfalls spread below. It remains the youngest and most volcanically active of the Hawaiian Islands, its landscape still taking shape today. Very much a center of agricultural industry, the “Orchid Isle” is justly famous for its tropical flowers, macadamia nuts and coffee. While Hawaii’s coast is popular with divers, surfers and big-game fishers, inland the past is very much present in the form of ancient petroglyphs and temples.