Big Island Part II

Monday, October 17, 2011

After a lazy start to the day, we headed out to Kekaha Kai beach which was one I had found on tripadviser.  The reviews there had warned that the road was a somewhat rough to get out to the beach.  That was a bit of an understatement.  This "road" made the southern route from Hana look fabulous by comparison.

Made us glad we were in a rental car.  After about 1/2 mile and 10 minutes of bumpy riding on this road, you come up to a sign.

This leaves one with the scary thought that if the road ahead is "unimproved" they might actually consider the road this far as being "improved".  Fortunately, it didn't get much worse.  After getting to a parking lot, we had an additional 1/2 mile hike to get to the actual beach.

Tripadviser had said there was even a better beach about a mile beyond some abandoned red buildings.  Tina wasn't in the mood for more hiking, so I walked up to these buildings on my own.  I have no idea what these buildings were, nor could I figure out why the only residents remaining was a family of half a dozen goats (note the 2nd picture).

I finally came across a couple coming back from the farther on beach and they indicated it was about another mile up across this lava flow field.

I decided the goats were better off crossing that "trail" than I would be, so I gave up the pursuit of the better beach.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

We headed out late morning to drive down to Hawaii Volcano National Park.  This would have been a much better trip to do while we were over at Hilo since it's only a 30 minute drive from there.  Since the plans didn't work out for that, we had a 2 hour drive there, and added on another 45 minutes to take a drive down to the southern most point of the USA.

 

For anybody like me who thought that the southern most point was Key West's claim to fame, that's only for the 48 contiguous states.   Hawaii has the claim for all 50 states.  If you go for all US controlled territory, it shifts to Rose Atoll, American Samoa.

 The rope and wood structures in these pics are used because boats come down to fish for extended periods of time off the coast here.  They lower down and raise up ice chests to keep the boats supplied so they can fish for extended periods. 



 So to be honest, by this time we were almost getting to the point of Volcanic overload.  We started seeing significant lava flows over on Maui and it had just continued to build throughout our stay at that island and the beginning of our stay on the Big Island.  But now we were actually driving into Hawaii's Volcano National Park.  The visitor center perked our interest a bit more and then driving around Crater Rim Drive, we came to the steam vents created by rain water leaking down to the hot volcanic magma below.  These were pretty impressive.

 

 But then when you get to the actual rim of the active volcano and see the current crater spewing out massive amounts of VOG, it's breathtaking.  (Yes, instead of FOG or SMOG, it's actually called VOG for Volcanic out gassing which consists mainly of sulpher dioxide).  On the day we were there this was a significant enough amount of VOG to lead them to shut down half of the park which was downwind from the volcano.

Having spent a couple of hours seeing this volcano from all the different spots around Crater Rim Drive, we took a road that went down to the ocean front part of the park.  The road finally ends where a lava flow crosses the road.

This is actually the opposite end of the lava flow road closure which we had seen from the Hilo on Saturday.  In all about 20 miles of roadway are currently under lava.

For dinner we drove over to the town on Volcano Village and ate at a wonderful place called the Kilauea Lodge and Restaurant.  The owner and head chef of this place was an Emmy award winning make-up artist in Hollywood.  He was hired at one point to do the make-up for a new show being filmed in Hawaii which came to have a lot of success ... called Magnum PI.  The show ended after a 7 year run, but by then he'd fallen in love with Hawaii.  So much so that he decided to stay, give up his career as a makeup artist, and take schooling in France on being a chef.  He was amazingly successful at that endeavor too.

The reason we got a late start on this day was that we had been advised to stick around to see the volcano after dark.  Even though it was getting late and we still had a 2 hour drive ahead of us, it was well worth staying for.  Seeing the glow of the magma some 250 feet down from the active crater rim, it gave you an instant appreciation of the tremendous potential power of this volcano ... powers encompassing both destruction and creation of new land.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Wednesday brought us to Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park.  In ancient times this was the place where 23 Hawaiian chiefs ruled the island.  It has it's own version of "The Great Wall", in this case made from the black volcano rocks.

 Afterwards we did a short hike up and down the coast line here.

In the afternoon we drove to Mountain Thunder Plantation.  Mountain Thunder is one of the top producers of high quality 100% Kona coffee.  The location we visited has several acres of Kona coffee tree's as well as the mill, processing, and packaging plant.

 

Most of the coffee they grow at this facility is organically grown and they feed in from a lot of farmers who also do things organically.  I'm not sure how much that plays into things but I will say that the coffee we had up there is by far the best coffee I've ever had.  No significant aftertaste at all and what aftertaste was there was a smooth pleasant taste.  Tina always hates to walk out of the house after having her coffee without brushing her teeth due to coffee aftertaste.  She didn't have that feeling after this coffee.

The main place we loved on this visit was the roasting room.  Smelling high quality coffee beans roasting is just out of this world.  And then when they open the roaster vent and let the beans spill out, the smell is just WONDERFUL!!!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

While staying at one of the B&B's on Maui, one of the other guests told us one of the things on his bucket list was to ride the ditch at the northern end of the big island.  The "Ditch" is an irrigation ditch which was originally built back in 1905/6.  It's 22.5 miles long and was built to carry much needed water to a dry part of the northern island in order to expand the farm acreage for sugar cane.  It's built through a series of 8 ft wide tunnels dug out through mountains (the longest one being 2 miles long) and flumes (water bridges going over valleys).  It's an amazing accomplishment given when it was first built. 

In 2006 an earthquake on the island caused the ditch to dry up.  By this time a whole lot of other industries had become dependent on this water.  One of those was a tourist ride which allowed people to ride kayaks to go down a 2.5 mile stretch of the ditch.  The earthquake had caused some of the tunnels to collapse and destroyed a few of the flumes.  It took a huge community effort to dig out the ditch and repair all the flumes and then it took even longer for them to clean up a portion of the ditch to make it suitable for tourists again.  Fortunately for us, they succeeded in this effort and reopened the ditch for kayak rides back in January 2011.

When we arrived at the facility to start our ride, we were greeted by a very friendly cat.  He even has his own business card as the official greeter.

After a short ride on a 4 wheeler van, we arrived at the first flume which has a pedestrian bridge built over it.  Crossing that we were then loaded into our kayak.

There was a guide in the front of the kayak ahead of Tina and then me in the back.  Even though I had a paddle, the guide did most the work and I just occasionally bushed us off the walls.  The guide pointed out several places in the tunnels where the Japanese (the main builders of the original ditch) left writings.

After a long, pleasant ride down, we were given a light snack while the workers loaded the kayaks back up on the vans for our return trip.  We purchased a new waterproof digital camera for this affair so I didn't have to risk my phone camera.  Unfortunately it's VERY sensitive to an movements at all so only a limited number of the pictures taken actually came through.

The next day we left the Big Island and flew to our final island of Kauai.  More on that island later.