Big Island Part I

Friday, October 14, 2011

We flew from Maui to Kona which is on the east side of the Big Island and then drove over to Hilo which is way over on the west side.  Even though its the "Big Island" it was still only a 2 hour drive.  Even so, it was getting dark when we arrived at our next B&B known as the Ohia House.

The house is out in a heavily wooded area of Hawaii where in fact there is no water lines run and wells are cost prohibitive.  So everybody in the neighborhood has 20' diameter tanks in there backyards and they capture all the rain runoff from the roofs of the houses and garages into the tanks for water usage.  The couple who ran our place had been there for 5 years and during the worst drought the tank had only gotten to half full.  Due to ample rain fall (about 200" per year) the tank is typically always full and overflowing.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

We  drove down to the coast line on the Hilo side and did a morning dip into a ocean pool warmed by volcanic heat.  The water was a pleasant 90 degrees.  It was also full of tropical fish.  One particular variety loves to munch on people who come to visit.  The nibbles didn't really hurt, but I found it rather irritating.  Tina on the other hand didn't seem to mind and struck up a conversation with a couple of ladies visiting from Alaska. It was obvious the nibbling didn't bother her because she talked ...

... and talked ...

... and talked some more.  :)

When we left we drove down the coast line using a great book titled "Hawaii The Big Island Revealed" which the B&B owner had supplied.  It took us down 20 miles of coast line and gave us numerous great places to pull into and see unique things.  Since Hawaii doesn't like to mark things other than an occasional mile marker, this was a GREAT book.  One of the places it led us was to this beach where a rock had been thrown up on the lava shoreline.  For perspective, this rock is about 8 feet tall, 12 feet wide, and 6 feet deep.  Amazing wave power.

Of interest was that the drive also took us through various lava flows of the still active volcanoe.  The warm pools we swam in dated back to a 1790 lava flow, the beach above was a 1955 flow, and beaches further on dated to 1974.

 Then the road abruptly ends at the site of a 1990 lava flow.  The sign for this stop shows before and after ... before being a beautiful palm tree lined black sand beach while after is mile after mile after mile of thick massive black lava.  The original beach is now buried 60 feet under the lava.

The lava flow wiped out a village of native Hawaiians.  With the type of volcano this is, people have months and months of notice that it's coming, but absolutely nothing they can do to stop it's advance.

The locals are trying to speed up the beach recovery by planting palms in the lava.  It still seems like it's going to be a long long LONG time in the process.

Regardless, I tried to contribute to the process and successfully created this crack in the lava.  :)

We took a run into Hilo for a late lunch break and then visited a major macadamia nut farm on the way back.  Any place that has 250,000 macadamia trees is worthwhile visiting in my book.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

We had to check out of the B&B after only our second night since the owner had family coming to visit.  On our way over to Kona we stopped at the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Gardens.  This garden was started by a man and his wife who bought up the 17 acre ocean side parcel back in 1974 (?).  At the time it was an overgrown jungle, trashed with abandoned cars and so forth, and just going to waste.  He and his wife spent 8 years fixing it up, putting in pathways and plants, and turning it into one of the best gardens we've ever visited.  Seeing pictures of the work they did just amazed us that they actually pulled it off.

 It's a mile long hike through the gardens down to the coastline and then back up.  They have in excess of 20 varieties of ginger and one of the garden keepers told me there are more the 200 varieties in the world.  They also had in excess of 10 varieties of Ti plants.

Leaving there we took a road known as Saddle Back Road up to see the visitors center at the now dormant volcano of Mauna Kea.  At the turn-off to the visitors center you're already at 6000 feet altitude.  The visitors center is at 9500 feet while the summit is in excess of 13000 feet.  It's probably fortunate that we didn't have a 4 wheel drive vehicle which is required to get above the visitors center.  Even at that, it was quite brisk at the visitors center.  The summit of Mauna Kea has a lot of telescope facilities due to it's altitude and the clear atmosphere.  The visitors center has telescopes it brings out in the evening, but it was too cool to stick around for that.

.

Even with our 6 cylinder rental car we struggled getting up to just the visitors center.  Coming back down we saw why.  I don't think I've ever seen a road with a 17 percent grade to it.  Even low gear in the car still needed a lot of help by intermittent braking to make it down safe and sound.

We got into Kona by late afternoon and we were amazed that they actually threw a street party just for our arrival.  Over 200 vendors had booths up for us to enjoy!  :)

In Kona we have a condo we're staying in.  The lanai directly overlooks the ocean where turtles and crabs and tropical fish all around.

The rest of the week in Kona will be posted sometime soon.