The short trip to Hawaii (slightly confusing but that's the proper name of the Big Island) was uneventful and soon we were descending towards the jagged, black volcanic coastline. We picked up the rental car and I was amazed to find that insurance hadn't been included and the basic insurance package, covering the vehicle and a third party, would double the cost of the rental! I declined any insurance because I'd read in the guidebook that the hire companies had there own and spent the next 8 days driving around very carefully but totally ignorant to the fact that a very expensive buck would stop at our door should anything happen.
For the first 4 days of our stay we were based in Kona - at Uncle Billy's Kona Bay Hotel, which was our first taste of a large-scale hotel since leaving Miami several months ago - and with cable TV too! Kona was a quaint little town, far less crowded and frenetic than Waikiki and made the ideal base from which to explore the arrid west coast of the island.
We headed down the coast for some r and r on the salt and pepper textured beach at Kahaluu Bay. Snorkelling there was fantastic with loads of new species of fish to be spotted in the clear, blue waters. Undoubtedly though, the highlight were a small group of sea turtles which flapped around, seemingly totally oblivious to the many snorkellers gawping at them as they foraged for food.
Much further down the coast, we paid a visit to Puuhonau at Honaunau Bay which is an important cultural area for the native Hawaiians. The area was once a large royal residence and had been semi-restored to give an impression of what life was like before the Europeans arrived. The small inlet which, long ago, ws the King's boat ramp was alvie with sea turtles. They were claerly visible in the swell which would lift them up and almost flip them over before breaking onto the rocks.
We followed a trail past ancient sledging tracks (the sleds would run on earth covered rocks, laid out for royalty to ride on) to a large lava tube which had been created when one of the islands huge volcanos had erupted, sending molten rock pouring down to the sea.
The final expidition we made on the west coast was a pilgrimage to the site where Captian Cook met a grisly end on February 14, 1779. I use the word pilgrimage as my Grandma has often told me that we are distantly related to the late, great explorer!
We left the car on Napoopoo raod and trakked along a trail which would take us through elephant grass, gnarly old lava flows and scrubland until we reached Kealakekua Bay where there is a monument to the Captain. The trail was long and sweaty but the coral and deep water drop-off near the monument was awesome. After snorkelling in various locations from the Barrier Reef to Borneo and beyond, it was by far the most fish filled water we'd ever seen.
It turned out that the monument didn't mark the exact location of Cook's death. A minute's walk back along the trail led to a small clearing at the water's edge where there was a rectangular block of stone bearing an inscription to mark where Cook had fallen under the blows of Hawaiian waroirs over two hundred years ago.
As we made our way from Kona to Volcano village, it soon became clear why Hawaii, known as the Aloha State, has a rainbow as it's symbol. It's everpresent on license plates throughout the state and became increasingly prevalent as we got futher east and closer to the Volcanos National Park. Along with the rainbows of course came rain, plenty of it too, which transformed the arrid landscape into a permasoggy squelchfest
Satoshi, our host at the Holo Holo In informed us that the area had been experiencing a drought and the current conditions were more than welcome. We envisaged tramping round the Park on or around saturation point and begged to difer. The YHA affiliated In was fantastic, uilt by Satoshi himself and was more like a large-scale home than a hostel.
Canadian Mark was also staying here, his eighth visit! He was here getting his fitnass together to cycle round New Zealand. We traded a few travellers tales and the talk somehow got round to Japan, a country obviously not high on his 'to do' list. "I'd rather go to Saskachewan in black fly season", he stated, which seemed to cause Alex great amusement.
The entrance to the National Park was only a few miles away and when we made the first of many visits, we drove round the Kilauea caldera. The giant crater has a 10 mile circumference and all round, sulphurous steam as the sleeping giant exhaled into the damp air.
Kilauea is one of two 'active' volcnos on Hawai'i, the other being Mauna Kea, a giant shield volcano to the north which is actualy the tallest mountain in the world when measured from its base on the sea bed. It's a staggering 56,000ft, almost doubling the height of Everest!
Mauna Kea's summit is perfect for watching the stars at night, and is actually home to some of the world's biggest and most advanced telescopes. We decided that the chance to scale the world's biggest mountain and check out the telescopes was too good to miss. We drove all the way to the visitors centre perched high on the volcano's slopes to make the demanding but do-able trek to the top.
Unfortunately, even though we'd acclimatised as best we could, the steep climb over strength sapping volcanic ash proved too much and after hours of relentless slog, we began to feel the affects of mountain sickness. Of course, we'd both been much higher before, Chakaltaya in Bolivia is over 15,000ft, but the heat, altitude and exertion were too much. There was no option but to turn back. Severly disappointed, we trudged back to the visitor centre where we did get to see the summit, on a computerised virtual tour of the observatories!
On the way back to Volcano, we called in at Hilo and visited the Tsunami Museum which told the story of the 'harbour wave' which had devastated the town in the 1940's. Other tsunamis had hit before and since but this one had been catastrophic. The museum was excellent, giing detailed accounts of the disaster from survivors and explained how the falsely named 'tidal waves' are created.
We returned to the National Park next day to spend the day exploring. Kilauea has erupted any times over the last century, the sea of fire in the caldera was written about by Mark Twain and numerous lavaflows had stretched out like long gnarly tentacles down toward the ocean right up to the preent day.
We walked across the still smouldering crater of Kilauea Iti (Little KIlauea) which, despite its name, took us an hour to cross. We were walking on jet black lava, steam escaping from fisures here and there, a contant reminder that molten magma was churning not too far below the surface.
After crossing the crater floor, we walked the Devastation Trail when cinder and ash had showered the land during the eruptions, choking the life out of all living things it descended upon. This all occurred a good few years ago however, and new life and greenery was slowly returning.
We followed the Chain of Craters road down towards the ocean and trekked across old lava flows to a patch of land where the lava had been etched with thousands of petroglyphs which depicted dancers, births, surfers and strange symbols. There were many circular or spiral marks which had once contained the umbilical cords of newborn - brought sometimes great distances by parents hoping to ensure good fortune and mana from the powerful volcano.
At the end of the road the most recent lava flows had engulfed the asphalt in its measured path towards the ocen. High up on the blackened hillside, fresh lava was beginning its descent. It was dusk when we arrived and the pinpricks of orange glow weren't quite what we were expecting or hoped for but hey, at least we'd seen some lava!
Our last day on Hawai'i arrived all too soon and we raced against time from Volcano back to Kona Airport to cath our next inter-island flight... to Maui....
charlie
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