Hawaii - The Big Island

Summer 2005

For our fifth anniversary, we decided to take a trip (just the two of us for once) to Hawaii.  I went to Oahu in college for the Aloha Bowl, but Gavin had never been at all.  There was really only one choice of island for us.  The Big Island, where we could see flowing lava!

We flew from Houston to Kailua-Kona on a Thursday, leaving Houston very early in the morning.  We had a layover in San Francisco, where Gavin was very happy to get some clam chowder in a bread bowl for brunch.   We arrived in Hawaii at about 3:00PM. 

After picking up the car, we headed to our hotel for the night, the Kona Seaside Inn.  The hotel was clean, but older.  However, we were right across the street from the hotel where we were going to a luau that night.  While waiting to get into the luau, we were treated with our first Hawaiian rainbow - the first of many!  There were also some people learning how to row these traditional-style (but made of very modern materials) canoes.

The luau we went to was called the "Island Breeze" luau.  It is at the King Kamehameha hotel.  We weren't that impressed with the food, but there were unlimited mai tais before dinner.  The dancing was pretty good, but if you go I recommend you get there early to avoid being in the back like we were.  While the show was going we got rained on a bit, but not very hard and it was so warm that it didn't matter too much.

The next day, we drove south along the coast.  As Gavin pointed out, this way the ocean was always on our side of the road.  The first stop we made was at Kealakeua Bay, the place where Captain Cook was killed.  We tried to do a bit of snorkeling, but the water was a bit rough, which made the visibility a bit bad.  Plus, Gavin lost his snorkel as he went through the break.  So, we got back out of the water and took a few pictures.  This one is from Manini Beach, looking across the bay at the Captain Cook monument where he died.

Next we stopped at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau.  Known as the "Place of Refuge", this is a National Historic Site where they have recreated some religious structures from the native culture.  The wooden carvings are called Akua Ki'i, and they are representations of gods.  This area of the island was considered sacred, and it was not allowed to shed blood here.  If a person broke a part of the moral code, or kapu, they would be killed by other members of their community so as to avoid the displeasure of the gods.  However, if the offender made it to a place of refuge, he was safe and could be absolved and return to his family.

This National Historic Site doesn't have tons of activities.  The main thing is a self-guided walking tour of the site.  There are a few buildings that have been recreated, but mostly you are left to your imagination.  This stop doesn't take very much time.  There is a nice bay next to the site that has very good snorkeling.  It was very, very busy when we were there, and since Gavin no longer had a snorkel, we decided to keep going.

That night we were camping at Punalu'u Beach State Park.  Punalu'u Beach is a black sand beach on the south-east coast of the Big Island.  We got there at about 3PM, and snagged a primo campsite overlooking the surf zone.  We took a walk across the beach, which was fairly crowded as this is a pretty major tour stop.  We continued on toward the point across the bay from this picture.  The landscape is broken lava rock, and the waves are pretty rough here.  There were also some concrete foundations we walked over, which Gavin correctly identified as old WWII fortifications.

This was one of the nicest places we camped all week.  The sound of the surf was very relaxing.  A pair of sea turtles crawled up onto the sand in the little cove below our campsite for the night, which was pretty cool.  This beach isn't a great place for swimming/snorkeling due to the high surf and the resulting cloudiness of the water.

Next morning we got up with the sun to squeeze in a trip to South Point.  We'd planned on doing this the previous day, but we were kind of tired and wanted to get to our campsite early.  South Point is 12 miles down a small road.  The last bit is gravel, so most people don't come down here.  It's well worth it, though.  South Point is the southernmost point on the Big Island, the southernmost point in the state of Hawaii, and the southernmost point in the 50 states.  Two currents come together here, making the surf the largest we saw on the island.  The waves were quite impressive!

This is also the best place from which to see Mauna Loa.  Unfortunately, it was pretty hazy and you could only see the outline of one flank of the largest mountain on Earth.  There were quite a few local people camped out along the cliffs on South Point fishing.  They had tied garbage bags to their lines so that the wind would carry the line out several hundred feet from the shore.  We didn't see anybody bring anything in while we were there, but I'm sure they catch very large fish here!

The major attraction for us making the drive all the way down to South Point was to take the hike to the Green Sand Beach.  This isolated beach is a 2 mile hike down a 4WD road.  The hike is windy and hot - it actually reminded me a lot of Wyoming, except for the presence of the ocean.

The green sand is created by the high olivine content in the rocks.  The green sand crystals are mixed with black sand.  I actually thought the effect was more gold than green, but it probably depends on the lighting.  To get to the beach, you have to clamber down the cliffs into the cove, but it isn't a hard climb.

We got to the beach at about 8:30 AM.  Another couple had camped out above the beach, and I don't think they were expecting visitors so early.  The guy was sunbathing naked, and they didn't notice we were there until we actually walked out onto the beach.  Oops!

We got back to the car by 10AM, which was good because we had another hike scheduled for that day.  We drove to Volcano National Park and set up our campsite by noon, which was necessary because they don't take reservations at the campground.  We got on the trail at about 2PM.  This was our first major hike for the trip.  We started on the Halemaumau trail by the visitor's center. This trail climbs down into the main crater of Kilauea, and continues across the crater floor to Halemaumau crater. 

Halemaumau crater is the most active part of Kilauea.  Back when the park opened in the 1800s Halemaumau was 400 m deep and had a lake of molten lava in the bottom.  Eventually, though, the lake drained and the crater floor uplifted to it's current depth of 80 m.

After hiking through the main crater, we continued around the north rim on the Crater Rim Trail.  It started to rain, and we were treated to several rainbows.  A bit footsore, we finally got back to the car and had dinner at Volcano House overlooking the crater.

Our second day at Volcanoes was all about hiking to see the lava.  Since we'd want to be at the lava flow at sunset, we took an easy morning.  First we had breakfast at a place in the nearby town, Volcano.  Gavin discovered sweet bread french toast, which I think was his favorite part of the whole trip. 

Next we went to the visitor's center and the Thurston Lava Tube.  Then we began the drive down the Chain of Craters road.  We made several stops on the road.  The best was a petroglyph site, which was about a mile hike from the road.

When we got tired of watching lava flow (which if it wasn't glowing red would be about as interesting as watching grass grow), we headed down toward the ocean entry.  Close to the coast, we came across a place where a skylight had opened into the lava tube that was feeding the ocean entry.  The red glow was incredible.

We found a spot and waited for sunset.  As darkness fell, what initially just looked like steam eventually started to glow.  Every once and a while you could see lava bombs shoot up when the interaction between the ocean and the lava caused a minor rock explosion.

Meanwhile, behind us on the hill you could start to see a worm of red lava snaking down the ridge.  The "lava worm" grew more and more impressive as darkness fell as well.  When it got completely dark, you could see small red glowing spots all over the ridge.

There are 13 telescopes on top of Mauna Kea.  Although the island itself gets a lot of rain, the top of the mountain is nearly always clear.  The tour guides (both of whom were native hawaiians) didn't seem too impressed with the observatories.  They talked a lot about how the money generated by the observatories doesn't benefit the native people.

You can see Haleakala (Maui) very easily from the top of Mauna Kea.  The two islands are only 70 miles apart at their closest point.

The vans took us all the way up to the top of the mountain.  Technically, the summit of Mauna Kea is the top of this cinder cone.  We took the 200 ft "hike" to the top, of course.  It was pretty funny how they were warning everyone not to walk up if they felt badly at the altitude.  I know 13,7000+ feet is nothing to sneeze at when you were at sea level 4 hours earlier, but I swear it was the easiest "summit attempt" I've ever made.

Mauna Kea is technically still active, but it hasn't erupted for a few hundred years.  When shield volcanoes reach the end of their active life, they lose some of their symmetrical shape and develop all these small cinder cones on top like those in the background of this picture.

It was fairly cold on the summit, probably somewhere around 35 deg F.  We went back to where the van was parked to wait for sunset.  Sunset was quite impressive.  As the light fell, the telescopes around us started "waking up" and beginning their night operations.  You can see the doors open on the telescope to the far left in the photo below. 

The next day we took it easy and looked around Hilo.  The picture to the right is a park on the waterfront.  The tree is my favorite kind of Hawaiian tree.  I love how the canopy is so wide and flat.  If I could get one of these to grow in my yard, I wouldn't need anything else for shade!  Wevisited Rainbow Falls and the Boiling Pots, which are in a park on the hillside above Hilo.  We were at Rainbow Falls in the afternoon, so they were sans the 360 deg rainbow that gives them their name.  Turns out, that usu\ally comes out in the morning.

It was pretty hot out, so we decided to go snorkeling at Richardson Beach State Park that afternoon.  The snorkeling there probably isn't the best to be found on the island, but I still had a great time.  I almost swam into a huge sea turtle before I realized he was there.  I think I was the only person that saw him, as he kind of blended in to the bottom.

We saw two waterfalls, Akaka Falls (left) and Umauma Falls (right).  Akaka Falls is 800-some-odd feet high.  It was quite impressive, but it is on the tour bus circuit, so it was a bit crowded.  There is another large waterfall just a quarter mile away, but the view of that waterfall from the trail isn't too impressive.  Umauma Falls is on the grounds of a private botanical garden.  Admission was something like $6 each, but we got juice and fresh bananas for our trouble.

We stopped for lunch at Laupahoehoe Point.  This small park marks a location where the 1946 tsunami killed many, including 23 school children.  This small park is quite pretty, but the water is too rough for swimming or snorkeling.  A nice lunch spot, though.

We drove to Honokaa for dinner that night.  Honokaa isn't very large, so there aren't a lot of dining choices.  We ate in a small place called Jolene's Kau Kau Korner.  Like most of the buildings in this town, the restaurant was in an older building.  The food was decent, not great.

That night we were camping at Kalopa State Park.  This park is in the forest on the northeast side of the island a couple thousand feet above sea level.  When we drove up there, we saw this rain squall over the ocean with a rainbow on one side.  Reservations for camping at this park were hard to come by.  Basically, you have to go in person to the State Parks Office in Hilo.  There are only a few sites, so it was more secluded than most of our camping.

Even though we didn't get going as early as we planned, Waipio wasn't too crowded when we got there.  Waipio is the southernmost of a series of deep valleys on the east coast of the Kohala penninsula.  It is also the most well-known and settled of these valleys.  There is a very steeply graded 4WD road into the valley.  Our rental car didn't exactly make that cut, so we walked.

Waipio Valley is about 1000 ft deep.  The beach is gray-black sand.  I had initially considered hiking through Waipio to the next valley north, Waimanu.  That hike is about 9 miles one way, beginning with the 1200 ft climb out of Waipio and then continuing up and down through several minor valleys.  Although it would have been very nice to get to the wilderness of the Waimanu valley, we decided we didn't want to spend the time to get there.  (It would have required backpacking overnight.)

Pretty soon we had a choice between fording a stream and turning back.  This is one of the only times I really wished I had trekking poles.  The water was flowing fairly swiftly, and the rocks weren't conveniently placed.

After a while the road ended with a gate and a no-tresspassing sign.  We could just see another very tall waterfall at the head of the valley, but we decided to turn around anyway.  The picture to the immediate right gives an accurate feel for the valley.  It is very beautiful, but there's a lot of places where people have brought things down into the valley and then not removed them when they break down.

Next we made our way down to the beach.  This was the only place on the island we saw a lot of surfers.  The break wasn't that big, and the rocky bottom made it a pretty touchy place to surf.  I'm wading in the surf where a large creek joins the ocean.  I was trying to see if there was an easy way to wade across so we could explore the other side of the beach.  Unfortunately, the rocky bottom makes it a bit tough.  If you're going across to the trail that goes to Waimanu, make sure you bring Tivas or don't mind wet socks.

The following morning we lazed around a bit in our room, and then left to drive up the upland highway to the Pulolu Valley, the northernmost of the large valleys.  This valley isn't settled (probably due to the lack of a stream).  It also isn't as dramatic as Waipio or Waimanu valleys, but it is much more isolated.  A normal foot trail leads down to the beach (much less strenuous than the Waipio road), and it's well worth the climb.

There are a series of waterfalls visible on some of the far cliffs.  Our tantalizing glimpses of this area played large in our decision to drop $200 each for a circle-island plane tour. The tour was like a review of our trip to that point.  So here's the review in pictures...

So that's it.  Hawaii our way.  Hope you enjoyed; we certainly did!