And now for something completely different: Hawaiian snow. On our second-to-last day in Hawaii, we took a tour up to the summit of Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the state at 13,796 feet. And even in early April, they still had snow at the summit.
We caught a somewhat hazy view of it from the west, in the Kohala area, but our best view of the mountain actually came the day after the tour, on our drive out to Akaka Falls. We’re probably due east of the mountain here:
We didn’t get to see much of the Hilo side of the island. Our last day there, we checked out of the hotel and just started driving, figuring we’d just see how far we could get before turning back to make our flight. We did actually make it to Hilo itself—just in time to turn around. (It was a Sunday anyway, and supposedly there isn’t much open in Hilo on Sundays.)
When we first crossed through Waimea to Hamakua, we took a side trip north to the lookout for Waipio Valley. The valley itself is unreachable without 4-wheel drive (the road has a 25% grade), but the view from the lookout was incredible:
It’s taking me longer than I thought to post all these Hawaii photos. North of Kona there are miles of old lava flows, the most recent of which were in 1801 (from Hualalai, the volcano above Kailua) and 1859 (from Mauna Loa, the second-higest peak on the island). Because the island is right in the middle of the trade winds, and has sizable mountains in the middle, the clouds all bunch up on the eastern side of the island, dropping several hundred inches of rain a year before stopping—rather abruptly—halfway across the island. The west side of the island, especially in North Kona and Kohala, gets closer to 10 inches of rain a year. That’s not far off, climate-wise, from Southern California. It also means that there’s not enough plants to break up a lava field in only 200 years, and large chunks of the coast look like this:
That’s not dirt, that’s rock! You may be wondering about the white bits. They’re a sort of temporary graffiti. All through this area, people have dragged out bits of coral to spell out messages ranging from “Hi Mom” and “Aloha Dolly” to “In Memory Of…” For some reason it’s almost universally good-natured. Katie’s got some interesting pictures. that we’ll be posting later.
Here’s a view of the coast itself. Continue reading
When we visited Oahu two years ago, we noticed that aloha was everywhere, and meant everything. Aside from hello and goodbye, it seemed to represent an easy-going, positive attitude. There were signs all over the place saying things like “Drive with aloha.”
Then there was mahalo, Hawaiian for “thank you,” which is used everywhere in place of the English phrase. Either it’s part of the wave of Hawaiian identity, or it’s mandated by the Hawaii tourist board.
Aloha is all over the big island as well, but not quite to the same extent. We didn’t see a single “drive with aloha” sign this time around, for instance.
What we did see was kapu. Kapu is the Hawaiian form of taboo, a word which has lost much of its meaning both in modern English usage and in modern Hawaiian usage. In traditional polynesian cultures, a taboo was a sacred prohibition, and violation was often punishable by death (generally by way of being chosen for a human sacrifice). These days, kapu mainly shows up on “No Tresspassing” signs—of which there are plenty!
We spent a lot of time exploring the Kona coast, where towns manage to be both beach towns and mountain towns at the same time. It’s simplest to think of the island as one huge mountain (though there are really four mountains on the island, with a fifth, Kilauea, working its way up). The land just climbs up out of the sea and it’s easy to get several thousand feet up without going very far inland.
On our first full day, we just headed south to see what we could find. We randomly turned down Napo‘opo‘o Road, which while acceptable by rental-car standards, was a very winding road with lots of drop-offs. The road leads to Kealakekua Bay, a major kayak launching point, where we stopped and got a view across the bay.
This shot quickly became my new desktop background on the laptop. Way off to the left (not visible in this photo) is the obelisk marking the spot where Captain Cook was killed by Hawaiians in 1779. Right by the road are the remains of the Hikiau Heiau (a heiau is a Hawaiian temple), where Cook read the burial rites for one of his sailors. Continue reading
Driving through the lava fields of North Kona, you’ll see signs like these:
After coffee companies stopped using donkeys for transportation, they turned them loose, and a herd of wild donkeys roamed the fields. They apparently picked up the nickname “Kona nightingales” from their, uh, “singing.” They’ve since been moved up to greener—and less traveled— pastures on the lower slopes of Mauna Kea, but the signs remain.
One can only assume the Kona nightingales were the inspiration for Surfin’ Ass Coffee Company and their signature island confection:
For the record: 1-inch macadamia nuts dipped in chocolate.
So… a week in Hawaii. I guess the main thing to remember is that it is the “big island.” It can take 2½–3 hours to get from one side of the island to the other, and that’s without stopping to see anything along the way.
We stayed in Kailua-Kona, and ended up spending most of our time on that side of the island. Part of it was that, since it was basically a long-delayed honeymoon, we figured we’d splurge on a few tours. So one morning was taken up by a submarine tour through the bay outside Kona, an afternoon was taken up by a whale watching cruise on a catamaran, and an entire afternoon and evening was spent on a trip to the Mauna Kea summit.
Highly recommended guidebook: Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed. It’s written by people who actually live on the islands and just explore them constantly, and they have a very engaging style that will have you reading sections about places you aren’t even planning to go.
We did decide that if we were to stay in Kona again, we’d try to stay closer to town. While the Keauhou Beach Resort has a lot on its grounds—a restaurant, tide pools with sea turtles, a beach, some shops, and even a couple of historical sites including some heiau (temple) ruins—it was too far from Kailua proper. Kailua-Kona (the names seem to be interchangable) is a classic beach town—only in Hawaii—and parking is cramped, expensive, and limited, so you want to walk as much as possible without having to get back to the lot and move your car every two hours.
We didn’t get to see much of the Hilo side, partly because of the tours, and partly because we got back so late from Volcano National Park one night that we couldn’t wake up in time to go anywhere the next day. (Tip: Drive to Volcano Village, fill up the tank, and then enter the park. Otherwise you’ll be searching for an open gas station in the middle of the night, and there really isn’t much between Volcano and Kona, unless it’s off the main highway.)
