Hawaii Part 2 - Kona Side

Laura: Now it's time for Part 2 of our trip to the Big Island of Hawaii! After spending three days on the Hilo side of the island, we be headed toward the western, or Kona side, of the island. More beaches and desert-like landscapes ahead! 

Day 4: Westward, HO! (plus a stop or two)

 

Laura: Before heading out for our next B&B, we had one last Papaya Boat thanks to our great host, Gary. It's a strawberry papaya with the center cleaned out, filled with yogurt and fruit, and decorated with the cutest little critter face I've ever seen!  Good show, Gary!

Our jungle home at the Volcano Tree House (2nd house owned by Bamboo Orchid Cottage B&B).

Along our journey west to the Kona-side of the island, we stopped at South Point. Here you have access to the southern-most point in the United States and one of the two GREEN sand beaches in the world. Getting to the former is much easier than the latter, but both are definitely worth seeing! Ask us about the journey to the Green Sand Beach the next time you see us...it was one wild and crazy ride!

The Green Sand Beach (Papalokea) is made from the ocean waves pummeling lava filled with olivine (when it's gem stone quality it's called peridot), which gives the beach it's khaki/olive green color - much easier to see in person than in our photos. They just don't do the color justice! There are only two green sand beaches in the world - the other is located on the Galapagos Islands. Guess we'll have to plan our trip to the Galapagos one day so we can say we've been to both!

It's hard to appreciate the green sand from a distance.  Wait for it....

You have to climb down a short but steep cliff trail to get to the beach. We brought down our cameras and a PBJ picnic to set up shop for a short afternoon hanging by the ocean.

Looks green, right?!? The sand was almost the same color as Alex's olive shorts and the ocean blue like his shirt,
so we tried to take a "stealthy" picture with the water and sand. Tried.....lol!

There were some pretty big waves rolling in with a significant undertow, so we didn't go swimming. But it was nice enough just to sit and enjoy the scenery!







After lounging around the beach for a while, we made the long journey back to South Point. Here are a few pictures from the southern-most point of the United States and nearby coastline!

From South Point, we continued north towards Captain Cook - the location of our next B&B. We stopped here and there to take in the stunning views from some road-side outlooks.

That's South Point in the background

Finding our next B&B, the Aloha Guesthouse, was a little tricky. The driveway is tucked away off the main road and then there is a very steep and bumpy ride up a mountain side to get to the actual house, but again the crazy journey pays off big time! The Aloha Guesthouse is nestled amongst several coffee bean farms and fruit orchards, which gives it a nice jungle feeling, but it is high enough on the mountain that you get incredible views of the ocean below. Our room had giant windows facing the ocean, so we got to witness some great sunsets!

After meeting our new innkeepers, Lee & Svetlana, and getting settled, we headed out for dinner at a local restaurant - the Keei Cafe. There I had my first taste of pan-seared, fresh tuna - YUM! Better than steak! For dessert we ordered the lillikoi (passion fruit) cheesecake - also YUM!

Quick notes about our stay at this B&B - 1)You should definitley stay there! 2) Being younger travelers, we are usually the "odd couple" at B&B's that are often frequented by older, more low key travelers. However, we were happy to find several couples of the younger variety at the Aloha Guesthouse during our stay which made for a lot of fun breakfast conversations. Not sure if there are always younger people, but it was nice during our stay. 3) The breakfast....FANTASTIC! Svetlana is an excellent cook. She alternates sweet breakfast with savory each day which keeps things interesting. Everything we had was super delicious, fresh, and homemade. They even use fruit from their own land in their cooking! I could talk about the food all day, but sadly we must move on...

Day 5: Snorkeling and Learning

After a delicious breakfast, we began Day 5 with a brief walk around the Aloha Guesthouse checking out the natural flora & fauna and picking some fruit to snack on later in the day.

Walex picking "Ugly Fruit" from a nearby grove

Then we decided to stay close to home and explored two really unique sites: Honaunau Bay & Place of Refuge. Honaunau Bay is an excellent place to go snorkeling or scuba diving. We started our day here and spent several hours checking out the local wildlife while swimming amongst the reef and rocks.

View of Place of Refuge from Honaunau Bay

All snorkeled-out, we headed to our second stop for the day - the Place of Refuge (Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau). This national park is home to a very special piece of Hawaiian culture. In ancient Hawaiian culture there were many rules, or Kapu, that people were required to follow to help maintain order in society. A couple Kapu examples: Your shadow can never fall across the shadow of the king, you may never interrupt a chief while he is speaking, men's food couldn't be prepared in the same bowls as food for women, and many more! If you did break a kapu the penalty was death for you AND your entire family!!! However, there was one chance for you to escape this fate - run to a Place of Refuge. If you were able to make it to the Place of Refuge before the authorities caught you, then you were safe and could spend time at the refuge "repenting your sins" and eventually return to society with all forgiven. This rule also applied to defeated warriors - if a warrior from the losing tribe could make it to a Place of Refuge before the winning tribe caught him, then the defeated warrior was allowed to live. Pretty neat policy! You can read more about the history by clicking the link above. 

This Place of Refuge on the Big Island is one of the best preserved examples in Hawaii. There are a handful of ancient artifacts and structures to check out and a lot of history to learn. It was a great way to spend our afternoon - stroll through the gorgeous park, learn a little history, and take in the beautiful views along the coast line. If you're lucky you may even spot a couple dolphins or sea turtles!

Only true professionals know when to bust out the Gorilla-Pod! ;0)

With our brains filled with fun facts about ancient Hawaiian culture, we headed up the coast to check out Kona. Kona is a very large and touristy city. We attempted to find a place to eat dinner, but everything was way too crowded and kind of a culture shock compared to the smaller towns we'd been visiting thus far. SO MANY PEOPLE!!! Maybe we'll go back there one day and stay at a fancy resort, but for this trip it was just too much to handle. We headed back towards Captain Cook and stopped at Teshima's Restaurant for some authentic Japanese cuisine. You've gotta try the tempura dinner and chocolate mousse dessert!

Day 6: To the end of the road...

No pics of the beach, but here's a nice
shot of Laura with her outfit matching
some flowers

Day 6 was a huge travel day! Based on suggestions from our innkeepers, we spent this day driving up to the northern tip of the Big Island and made several pit stops along the way. First we stopped at "Beach 69", aka Waialea Bay, for a late morning beach break. There are a lot of big trees along this beach which creates excellent shade for pale people like me to hang out in and that morning there was great surf rolling so there were plenty of waves for Alex to romp in! It's a more secluded beach compared to Hapuna Beach just to the north, so we had a nice calm atmosphere with few people to bug us. Definitely a great spot to stop for a couple of hours!

From Beach 69 we continued north along the coast through some very interesting, desert-like terrain in areas that are slowly recovering from lava flows in the 1800s. Such a huge contrast from the lush greenery further south in Captain Cook and the rainforests back on the east-side in Hilo.

Our next stop was Hawi (Ha-vee, in the Hawaiian language w = v), a small town on the northern coast that is home to many artists and a really great place to stop for lunch: The Bamboo Restaurant & Gallery. They serve delicious food and the Lillikoi Iced Tea is to die for! You can even purchase a bottle of their Lillikoi drink mixer to take home! There is also a small gallery/souvenir shop attached to the restaurant for those of us who like to buy little trinkets to take home.

Beyond Hawi, Highway 270 dead-ends just above Pololu Beach. There is a small parking area that gives great views of the beach and the mountains surrounding the Pololu and Honokane Nui Valleys, which look like something out of the opening credits for Jurassic Park!

Pololu Beach down below...

...and Jurassic Park off in the distance!

 As I mentioned the road ends just ABOVE the beach, so we made the 20-30 minute trek down the cliff-side on a steep and rocky trail with lots of switchbacks. The further down we went the more we realised how much we'd hate the hike back up, but getting to the beach was definitely worth the hardship.

Pololu Beach is a black sand beach mixed with a large assortment of stones smoothed down by the crashing waves that make perfect skipping stones! We spent a lot of time working on our skipping skills. I think I have made some improvement, but there is still a long way to go!

Back at the top! So exhausted and sweaty, but so worth it!

Once we successful completed the epic climb back up to our car, we packed up and headed home!


Day 7: One final journey...

Alex:  We had to get back to the real world someday, but on our return trip we decided we would take the scenic route along the Saddle Road.  Before we hit the road, we said goodbye to the Aloha Guest House.

The Innkeepers were harvesting fruit when we left. 
Here's a bunch of miniature bananas freshly picked.

The Saddle Road travels right across the middle of the island, between the two big peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.  Someday I'd like to take the road up to the observatory on Mauna Kea, but we didn't have time this time.  It was neat to start at sea level, and then an hour later be over a mile up driving right alongside Mauna Kea rising two more miles up into the clouds.

The terrain changes along the drive were pretty impressive.  We attempted to take some pictures regularly during the drive and compiled a gif below.  Over the course of a couple hours we passed from jungle to lava flow to scrub land to forest to desert to grassland to fog-covered unknown and back into jungle again.

Laura:  When it was all said and done, we returned our Jeep with nearly 800 miles under our belts.  Not too shabby for seven days on the Big Island.  We'll have to return someday to hit the northeast corner where all the cowboys live.  Until next time!...

~The Lorax~

Hawaii Part 1 - Hilo Side

Alex:
Time for another big post, because we recently went on a big adventure!  Over spring break (the third week of March this year) Laura and I went to Hawaii for the first time ever for both of us.  We visited The Big Island because we wanted to see the volcanoes and all the micro-climates.

Getting there of course wasn't exactly easy.  We managed to keep it down to three flights each way, but it was still a full travel day on each end of the trip.  If you go to Hawaii, make sure it's a long trip to make the travel worth it!

We arrived in the dark, but actually had little trouble finding our accommodations for the first half of the trip: the Bamboo Orchid Cottage B&B.




Day 1:  Waterfalls, crashing waves, and lava trees

The first morning after we arrived we drove around picking up supplies (PBJ fixings, snacks, water), acclimating to the island, and getting late breakfast in Hilo.

This tiny pineapple was not breakfast

We walked around downtown Hilo for a bit (a lot of stores were closed since it was Sunday), but thankfully the Full Moon Cafe was open for lunch. They serve really delicious Thai food and we'd highly recommend that you eat there if you have the chance. After lunch we went to check out the nearby Rainbow falls, just north of Hilo. It was a nice little stop.

We took a short walk up into the forest along the river where there lived this massive Banyan tree growing out and up the hill killing all the other trees it could reach. According to a local it was planted in the early 1900s!

It was a very short walk over to the river above the falls, where we hopped across the rocks for a little bit.















We drove around and saw some more streams and smaller falls and various flowers until we found our way to a little rocky beach area.  We stopped here and walked around looking at the waves crashing against the rocks, and had ourselves a PBJ lunch.

We drove down southeast to the tiny Lava Tree State Park.  A short path loops through the park, winding between colorful vegetation, deep cracks in the earth, and the lava trees.

It's hollow!

 
The lava trees are the main attraction, and are hollow pillars created by a certain type of tree that held so much moisture it resisted burning long enough to create a mold of solidifying lava.

On some of them you can still see the texture of the bark in the stone of the interior walls.

This one is medium size

The lava flows were fast moving enough that most of the rest of the lava flowed away, and so the molds can be pretty tall.

Unfurling fern fronds

 

By the time we left it was getting dark, so we stopped by Hilo for a drink and some pizza at Cafe Pesto (really great food too!) and then headed back to the B&B for the night.



Day 2:  Volcanoes and craters

On the second day it was time to see some volcanoes! After a delicious breakfast we headed a couple miles down the road to the Volcanoes National Park.  We drove straight through to the top of Kilauea, which was actually a pretty short distance.

At the top of the caldera is museum, with this view.  We would come back later at night and see the orange glow of the lava below, but it was too dim and drizzly to get a good picture.

Kilauea is not tall compared to Mauna Loa or Mauna Kea,
which are nearly two vertical miles higher at their peaks!

We had to turn around here, as the road circling the caldera was closed due to toxic fumes.  If you plan to visit Volcanoes National Park, expect to make your plans as you go.  Even the park rangers can only give you a general idea of where to find lava flows, as it changes from day to day.

These bluffs also look out over the caldera,
but it's a little muggy...

As we headed down from the top, we stopped off at the steam vents, steam bluffs, and sulfur banks.

This vent was really blasting!

A bamboo orchid - the namesake of our B&B

Hiking just a little ways from the steam bluffs brought us up close with the sulfur banks and some more steam vents.

Don't look TOO impressed!

The sulfur stains the rock yellow, and even forms crystals in some of the cracks.

CRYSTALS!!!

It's really not cold, but the steam can get on you and then
gets chilly when it evaporates.

Moving on!  We planned to follow the Chain of Craters road over the lava flows all the way down to the Pacific, but first we would stop for our long hike of the day, the Kilauea Iki crater.

If you look real close, you can see people down there.

This bad boy erupted in 1959, sporting a lava lake that filled and emptied several times, lava waves in the lake that broke on the "shore", formed whirlpools as it drained, and had a spewing lava fountain that reached nearly 2000 feet high.  There are some good videos out there of the eruption on YouTube and Vimeo.  This one is pretty good, showing waves at 14:35, whirlpools, and the repeated filling and draining. It's pretty neat to see the video and know that's what we were walking around and on.  Even the far ridge from the Pu'u Pua'i cinder cone we walked along was spattered with lava.

Foof playing tour guide and reading from the trail info pamphlet.

We started in the jungle on the ridge above, walking along the rim of the crater.  The jungle thins out closer to the Pu'u Pua'i cinder cone since much of the foliage was burned up by the fountain.



Laura: The trail descends at the far end of the crater, and once you reach the bottom you're now walk along the hardened lava lake. Coming out of the jungle and onto the crater surface is like walking out onto the surface of the moon! So barren compared to the lush jungle.

Along the upper sections of the lake ridge you can find some of the usual lava flow
loving ʻŌhiʻa lehua flowers - great legend associated with these flowers!

Lava moustache

Foof getting the shot with her new camera

Down into the crater we go, toward Pu'u Pua'i first, and then onto the flat lava lake.

Alex: It's hard to get perspective in this barren place, so I walked a little ways ahead and we shot the two pictures below.  Laura is on a ridge in front of Pu'u Pua'i, at least as far from it as I am from her.  The cavernous opening behind her being the collapsed lava fountain. 

Laura in front of Pu'u Pua'i

And this is the narrow end of the crater

Eventually we descend until it flattens out.  There is one last broken ridge section we pass through before entering the flattest and widest part of the crater.  At this point the rock is still hot, steam seeps out of cracks in the rock and there is almost no vegetation.

At the far end of the crater we ascended back up the ridge - a quick but steep trek!


On the way back to the car, we took a short detour to walk through an empty lava tube -- remnants of an underground lava river.

Entrance to the lava tube

 

We exited the tube, climbed back up to our car and continued on our trek toward the ocean down the Chain of Craters road.  We paused at a few craters and drove past a few lava flows from the 60's and 70's.

Once the jungle thinned out, the drive alternated between light forest, grassland, and barren lava flows

We observed the two main types of lava along the way.  Most of the pictures we have are pahoehoe lava (smooth lava with all the wrinkles and folds from hotter, less viscous flows), and the background of the picture below is probably our best shot of 'a'a (rough, crumbly lava formed from cooler, more viscous flows).

Did I mention we rented a Jeep?

Think of 'a'a like crumbled up chunks of a brownie, and pahoehoe like a soup skin, but don't confuse the broken up pieces of an old pahoehoe flow as 'a'a.

Laura: When we reached the low plateau approaching the ocean, we stopped off to see the petroglyphs.  Here there is a mix of recent and ancient markings in the rock. Some symbols recount travel around the island and some groupings serve as "family trees". A lot of the small dots/holes are where umbilical cords are placed to celebrate a birth (some people of Hawaiian ancestry still follow these customs).

Alex: Finally, we reached the Pacific ocean and the end of the road.  I should have noted that this was more about the journey than the destination, because the end of the road is pretty abrupt.  The road only ends because lava flowed over it in 1986 and they haven't rebuilt it (the volcano is still erupting, after all).

Actual flowing lava is several miles past this point, but
you can see the steam plume from here (far right in picture)

"Road Closed" ...You think?
End of the road, and end of our hiking for day 2

We drove back in the dark across the lava flows, through the misty jungles, through the rainy rainforest and back to the summit to see the glow of the crater.  Then we left the park and had some delicious Thai food just down the road at Thai Thai (Lorax recommended!!!) before turning in for the night.

Day 3:  Hot water and hot lava

On our last day on the east side of the island, we had to see some flowing lava. We booked a hiking tour out onto the active lava flow for the late afternoon, so in the morning we headed to Hilo for equipment (hiking pants, flashlights, snorkel gear for later) and then swung down to a hot spring at Ahalanui Park for a quick dip.

The drive through the rainforest was very pretty

The water in the spring was a touch bathwater-y since it's heated by the volcano, but the ocean view was very nice!

Our group was about 8 people plus our guide

After our visit to the hot spring, we drove down along the ocean to the edge of the lava flow -- opposite where we ended our adventure the previous day.  Locals had built a small village & cultural center here on the edge of the flow just outside Kalapana, a town overrun by lava flows over the last couple decades.  This is where our tour started, and after covering a mile or two by vehicle along the Chain of Craters road (the other end), we set out on foot.

Pahoehoe laval -- soup skin!
Also, look closely -- smoke on the far left from lava
flowing down toward the ocean

The travel distance on foot was about 3 miles each way.  The going was medium speed, as the lava was very uneven, but was so rough it provided decent footing.

You still want to be very careful not to slip, though.  The lava is full of silica, and until it is eroded down its surface is like tiny shards of broken glass.  Even brushing your hand across it lightly will give you splinters -- I did this accidentally later in the hike and got a nice bleeder in my fingertip.

Resting partway. Behind me in the distance, a kipuka -- an
area surrounded but untouched by the lava, covered with trees

We found out about this hike from people at breakfast at our B&B, and one of the people in their hike slipped their leg into a lava crack and received hundreds of sharp little keepsakes. And that's why we went out and bought me some hiking pants (see picture, left).

Lava flowing into the ocean.  We're pretty close now.

The lava under our feet changed consistency as we went along and traveled from decades-old to years-old to days-old flows.  At first it was worn down with plants growing in the cracks and a sandy path worn from all the hikers.  Then the plants disappeared and it felt crunchier.  Then the crunch turned to a surface crispiness and you could feel the heat coming off.

Our guide checking out the smoke, searching for lava

Our guide stopped us and pointed out heat waves emanating ahead.  He ran up ahead to figure out where the fresh flow was, and when he came back we covered the final 100 yards.

And there it was

And yes, we got VERY close

This video shows the slow speed of the flow and our close proximity:

The lava crackles and hisses as it cools, and little pieces pop off -- be careful where you step!

Laura: Fun tip! Bring a wire whisk and thick gloves with you on this hike. You can stick the whisk into the hot, flowing lava and take home a nice clump of fresh, primordial earth! Unless of course you're superstitious and believe in the "Curse of the Lava"! Anyone who takes lava rock off the island is destined to have terrible things happen to them when they get home! Mua ha ha ha ha ha! According to our guidebook people mail lava rocks back to the Big Island all the time. Lol.

After checking out the flowing lava for a while (we have a zillion pictures!!!), we made our way to the cliffs overlooking the ocean to see where the lava hits the water - where molten lava is cooled and forms the newest portions of the island.

As the sun set it was finally time to start making our trek back to the village/cultural center...IN THE DARK! It was very strange hiking over the lava without being able to see the horizon or even really knowing how far you've gone. It was so dark!!! Thankfully we had little flashlights to help light up the path, but it was still a bit treacherous hiking over the lava.

It took about an hour or so of slow hiking to get back to the van that would drive us back to the cultural center in Kalapana. Our guide did a great job teaching us about the history of the lava flows and safely navigating the terrain with and without sunlight. Overall, this was an awesome experience, well worth the price, and we would highly recommend this to anyone!

Alex:
Coming soon -- our travels to the Kona side of the Big Island of Hawaii!