Waikiki and Aloha - A Hui Hau

Sunday June 27, 2010

We headed down the mountain to a quiet Hilo Airport on Sunday morning under a cloudy sky. One nice surprise was the very comfortable patio type furniture in the waiting area of Hilo airport. Apparently they were new and some were still waiting to be unpacked and set up.

We took off for Honolulu and got another good look at the top of Mauna Kea, we were at the same altitude as we passed the telescopes.

In Honolulu we drove to the Hilton Hawaiian Village and checked into the Ali'i Tower, with a nice view of Waikiki Beach. We had to adjust to so many people being around after being out on the rural Big Island.

We swam a little and walked around the Hilton complex.

Monday, the 27th, we headed out to the beach and walked from the Hilton at one end to the end of the hotels on Waikiki Beach. We walked past the Pink royal Hawaiian, the Grand Old Lady of the Waikiki resorts.

On the way back we finally did the tourist thing and $20 to have our picture taken with Lei's, parrots, cockatoos, a macaw and a couple of other birds - with our camera.

That wasn't the end of the birds. when we got back to our room on the 10th floor of the Ali'i Tower, we had visitors. We had left the sliding door open and found a white dove checking out our room. he strutted to the lanai and took off. Ten seconds later his cohort came strutting out of the bathroom like he owned the joint and walked out the door and flew off.

We packed up and headed for the airport and United Flight 2.

Hawaii was way better than we expected and we would have been happy to stay, but the sign we photographed in Kalapana was prophetic,

it was the end of the Hawaiian road. We loved it, we hope we'll be back again.

A great way to celebrate a great 40 years.

Aloha, a hui hau.... Bye, until we meet again.

Into the Volcano

June 26, 2010

Saturday morning we gathered ourselves up, had breakfast and said hello to the resident Kalij Pheasant at the Volcano Teapot Cottage. The Kalij Pheasant is another of the many invasive species on Hawaii. This guys ancestors came from the area of Pakistan and Nepal. They were brought to the big island in 1962.

Anyway, the objective today was to explore Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park. We started at the visitor center and then headed for the Kilauea Iki Trail. A four mile loop said to be one of the best hikes in the world. We started out on the rim of the Kilauea Iki crater, a part of Kilauea that had a major eruption in 1959. From the rim, the floor of the crater 400 feet below, which is actually a frozen lake of lava, looks flat. The large Halema'uma'u pit crater is visible, smoking in the back ground.

The trail took us to the far side of the crater, we saw a number of wildflowers along the way and took some artsy photos of the large ferns.

Then at the opposite side point, a little more than a mile, we started the 400 foot descent into the crater. We came to the "bathtub ring", a ring of lava rock left around the edge of the crater as the lava froze and shrank, leaving this initially solidified layer to crumble at the wall. In the picture on the left, Kathy is standing on the bathtub ring with some Ohi'a blossoms in the foreground. The Ohi'a is one of the first plants that sprouts in new lava rock. We walked across the bottom of the crater which didn't look so flat close up.

Jim poked at one of the many steam vents with his hiking stick. ( I can imagine the ranger's report: "witnesses said he was there one minute poking at the steam vent and then there was a "whoosh" and he was gone..."). Actually the lava, which is over 400 feet thick, has been solid since the late 1980's but rainwater seeps down to hot rock and a steam vent is born. The white coloring on the ground is some calcium compound dissolved by the water.

We finished crossing the crater and climbed the opposite wall, taking a short diversion to walk through the Thurston Lava Tubes. We had paused for a snack and were about to enjoy it when a couple of tour buses pulled up. So we deferred the snack and went through the tube before the thundering hoard caught us. We completed the 4 mile hike and got back to the car.

We then headed down the Chain of Craters road to see where the lava hits the ocean. We had been there in 2002 and seen the steam from hot lava hitting the seawater. As of May 2009 there is no activity, so it was sort of an aimless hike. It is interesting to see the lava covering the road that used to go to Kalapana, where we were the day before.

We got back up the mountain in time to drive around to the Jagger museum on the rim of the large caldera. The rim road has been closed for 2 years due to sulfur emissions from the steaming Halema'uma'u crater. There we took up a position at the overlook and watched as the sun set and the daylight dimmed. Then we could see the red glow from the home of the volcano goddess Pele. An awesome sight.

We had dinner at the Kiawe Kitchen in Volcano, looks almost like it should be a snack bar, it actually serves world class meals. Excellent.

We finished the day with a well earned soak in the hot tub at the cottage.

Volcano and Kalapana

Thursday Evening, June 24th we arrived in Volcano under clouds misty skies. We were at 3800 feet elevation so we were close to the clouds. Volcano is a nice little artisty town with something like 29 B & B's. We checked into the Volcano Teapot Cottage, a little cottage on a large patch of land with a hot tub in a gazebo out back. Everything is a teapot theme. We had dinner at the Thai Thai Restaurant (no, that isn't a typo, the word Thai appears twice) which was very nice.

Friday June 25th we headed down the mountain to look for some snorkeling. Enroute we came upon Lava Tree State Park, so named because there are remains of tree trunks standing as high as 12 feet that were essentially petrified when the lava surrounded them during an eruption of Kilauea in 1790. The flowers and plants were excellent, the most interesting being the trees that gave the sky a Jurassic Park look - we tried to capture it in the picture.

Adam: Is this what you had in mind?

Eve: No you bozo, I said FIG leaf!

Heading further down toward the coast we passed a papaya farm, and visited a couple of State Parks on the coast. Getting a good look at the pounding surf.

We managed to find Kapoho Tide pools, a group of tide pools in a private community. Jim snorkeled a couple of the pools and found the water to be crystal clear. We got some good fish photos but the footing on the rocks around the pools was a little rough.

We finally made our way to the end of the road in Kalapana. When we first visited the area in 1974, Kalapana was a nice little town with a little strip of stores near the water. Around 1990 the volcano wiped out the stores in a lava flow and cut off the road. It is now about a quarter mile from the water, the fill in being all relatively new black lava rock. There has been an attempt to get coconuts growing with mixed results. The coast has a small black sand beach but the surf is pretty high.

About a mile back from the former Kalapana we saw the Star of the Sea painted church. I had been under the misconception that they were called painted churches because they were painted wood structures. One look in the window made me understand what they meant by painted. The photo is of the flat wall behind the altar. Notice the great perspective painting on the wall.

We stopped in Pahoa - a reputed haven for ex-hippies and outlaws, - it didn't look nearly that bad. Good coffee house. As we headed back to Volcano, we were impressed by the seemingly endless stream of traffic coming from Hilo. It was the end of the work day and it turns out that the area around Pahoa is loaded with bedroom communities. The commute looked pretty tough. Glad we were going the other way. It seemed really out of character for what seems like an otherwise rural region.

Back at the Teapot Cottage we enjoyed Blue Hawaiians with a black rum layer in the hot tub.

From Waikoloa Around the Southern Most Point

June 24, 2010

We finished up at the Marriott Waikoloa with a morning snorkel looking for turtles. On the way to the beach we came across a pair of Saffron Finches on the lawn.

We found the turtles but in water that was too shallow and cloudy to snorkel.

What we did see was a trigger fish (humuhumu et cetera et cetera) with a pattern different from the ones on Maui. we also found a purple polka dotted puffer fish.

We headed south from Wailoloa, stopping to take a picture with Haleakala on Maui 80 miles away in the background. Our first stop was the quilt shop in Kona. Then we found Kona Brewing Co. and had lunch there. From there we drove through Kona and down the west coast of the Big Island, taking in the views from the road sometimes 1000 feet above the water.

One of the viewpoints was from the Coffee Shack where we stopped for a cappuccino and latte and got to see the resident Gecko eating from a dish.

We rounded the southern end of the island and arrived in Naalehu, the southernmost town in the United States, at 19° 3.8' North Latitude. We stopped in the local bakery, (the southernmost bakery of course) for a snack and communed with the local bird life, a yellow billed cardinal.

Continuing on the same road but now heading north instead of south since we rounded the southern end of Hawaii, we came upon Punalu'u Beach State Park. Known for its black sand beach and turtles.

The sand was black, the surf was high and impressive and there was one turtle on the beach. Unfortunately some inconsiderate (and apparently uninformed) tourists crowded around the resting turtle and he said "I'm outta here" and crawled into the water.

While we were there three life guard types showed up in a hurry and one launched off the beach into the surf on a surfboard and was patrolling back and forth in the waves. Then a helicopter showed up and landed and sat with the rotors turning and engine running. Suddenly two zodiac type fishing boats appeared around the end of the rocky point at the end of the beach. It appeared that one was out of gas and was being towed by the other one through the surf to get to the beach. The unpowered boat was at times going through the surf broadside, but fortunately never capsized. After a somewhat wild ride they made it into the relative shelter of the bay and all the rescue people departed. I guess they had radioed for help. The guy who paddled out into the waves on the board impressed me the most.

From the Southern Cross to the North Star – Stargazing on Mauna Kea

We had booked a tour with Mauna Kea Summit Adventures for the trip up to the 13, 700 foot top of the second highest mountain on the Big Island. (The biggest is Mauna Loa, located to the south and which is, by the way, the second largest volcano in the Solar system. The largest is on Mars.) At 4 PM we were picked up at the Starbucks in the Queens Shops plaza a short distance down the road from the hotel. It was an hour and twenty minute ride up the slopes of Mauna Kea through some extremely dry country.

Pat, our guide and driver and owner of the tour company, said it had not rained in a year and most of the animals were dying off. All that was left were the Hawaiian owls, one of which we saw, and the wild donkeys.

The wild donkeys are feral, having been released by coffee growers in favor of tractors. They have multiplied (a male is called a jack, and a female a jenny). As developers came in they planned to thin or eliminate the herds, but an animal rights group formed a program called “Save our Asses” to get a more humane population control method. So the jacks and jennies are kept separate as best they can. It may be working because we never saw a donkey.

We stopped for dinner at the Onizuka Visitors Center at 9000 feet. The guide pointed out that there would be other groups there, mostly Japanese tourists and mostly women for some reason. There is a new Japanese telescope at the top of Mauna Kea, and they all want to see it.

Before we left the visitor center we took a short walk to see a blooming Silversword plant. they only grow at high altitudes in Hawaii and bloom after 20 to 50 years one time and then die. The blooming process takes about 6 months.

From there we did the last eight miles or so to the top, one of the steepest roads I can ever remember and pretty rough in some spots. Climbing 4700 feet in 8 miles has to be steep. We got to the 13,800 foot summit in time to see the 12 telescopes, covering everything from infrared, through visible light to millimeter wavelength radiation.

Kathy even had a sighting of an astronomer.

It was slightly below 40 degrees at the summit with a 15 knot wind which put the wind chill below freezing. Fortunately Mauna Kea Adventures supplied parkas and gloves.

At sunset we watched the sun go below the clouds and also the shadow of the mountain stretch far out to the east.

Then Pat said we had to start down for an appointment at around 7:30. So we headed partway down the steep road and pulled into a branch road and got out in time to see one of the highlights of the trip. To our right was the Southern Cross and to our left was the North Star. This is one of the few place on earth you can see both at the same time. Pat pointed out a moving light coming out of the Southern Cross, it was the International Space Station (ISS). We watched it fly under the moon and followed it until it disappeared over the north east horizon.

From there we headed down to an open area at about 9000 feet. Two 11 inch telescopes were set up and we got to look at several celestial features, including omega Centauri, a globular cluster of stars that looks like grains of salt on a black table, the Ring Nebula, which looks like a green smoke ring, the craters on the Moon and most impressive, the Rings of Saturn plus two of its moons including Titan and one of the other 61 moons.

We headed down the mountain and got back to the Marriott about 11:30PM.