Kona and the Volcano Park

We really liked the town of Kailua Kona (aka Kona). It's quirky, walkable, touristy and just fun. We had an early dinner one night at a pub just across the street from the ocean. Kinda weird to watch Monday Night Football at 4 pm but who's complaining? We had good food and some really good desserts too.

We spent one day at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which is at the southernmost tip of the Big Island. It would seem not to be too far from Kona but the major highway around the island is mostly a two-lane road, so it takes much longer than on an interstate (or the H1). We stopped to stretch our legs at one point and I got this photo of the lava fields. Out in the distance is the Pacific Ocean. You can tell how the lava just flowed all the way out to the sea. It's fascinating just because it's so different from any landscape I've ever seen. (Click any of the photos for a larger version.)

In the park the first major thing we saw was the Kilauea Caldera. It's huge, several miles across, and has this giant steaming vent, the Halema'uma'u Crater. It's only about half as deep today (500 ft) as it was when the first Western explorer found it in 1823.That's due to lava flows overflowing and building up the floor of the caldera, though at least four times the result has been the caldera floor breaks due to all the extra heat and weight. Since 1905 seven new flows have been added to the caldera floor.

We drove down towards the sea, keeping an eye on the weather. It had been overcast much of the day with sun peeking through every now and then. We stopped to hike out to the petroglyphs, which were .7 miles away. We hadn't gone very far when it started sprinkling. By the time we reached the petroglyphs we were soaked to the skin. It was relatively warm but it was just so odd how it wasn't raining on the road, but less than half a mile away we coudn't escape it! We hiked back to the car and found it still hadn't rained there. Fortunately we'd brought changes of clothes and were able get dry at our next stop.

That next stop was at the end of the Chain of Craters road, which is the main north-south connector in the park. The road stops abruptly as it turns eastward at the coast due to lava flowing over it. But it's a beautiful stop, very dramatic lava cliffs and the Holei Sea Arch is there. I love these two photos I took.

A Really Big Island

I've recently returned from Hawaii with my friends C and D, where we celebrated C's milestone birthday.

What struck me about the Big Island of Hawaii is just how diverse it is and how different from the other two islands I'd visited, Oahu and Maui. We landed at the Kona airport and since I had an aisle seat, I didn't notice the landscape until after we'd grabbed the rental car and were driving to our condo.

That's when I realized it was DARK outside and not just because there were no streetlights on the main highway. We could see that as we looked up to our right (going up the side of the volcano/mountain) there were lots of houses but there was nothing along the side of the road. The next morning we realized why: it's all lava. Tons of broken up lava chunks, some ground up, but mostly in very large slabs, are all along the side of the highway up & down the western coast of the Big Island.

We were amused at the graffitti that decorated the lava. Unlike permanent spray paint, here the stark brown-black of the lava is adorned with white rocks. That's great because if someone writes something offensive, it can easily be dismantled and changed to something entirely different. None of the graffitti permanent that way. Very clever, we thought.

We stayed at some condos in Waikola, which is north of the Kona airport and the town of Kailua Kona itself. It was very quiet there, lots of hotel resorts & condos, not really much to do but that was fine. Kailua Kona was only about 15-20 minutes away. We were very close to Anaehoomalu Bay (aka A-Bay, for obvious reasons) and it suited us perfectly. It had some shade, some sun and down in front of the Marriott it had lounge chairs. One advantage of going in late October is there are no crowds and we had our pick of places to sit. There was a reef that made getting in & out of the bay a little tricky since I'd forgotten my water shoes, but I managed not to scrape up my feet.

One day while we were there a seal had beached herself. The speculation was that she would soon give birth, but of course she didn't do that while we were around. We also saw several sea turtles on shore that day. We kept our distance but I would have loved to have gotten up closer to them.

Our condo backed onto a golf course so it was all lovely and green on our property with the stark contrast of the lava fields on either side of the main highway. We drove up the NW side of the island one day and the further north we drove, the more the lava fields disappeared and the more we saw traditional yards & houses. We'd gone north in search of a different beach, just for variety's sake, but it seemed to be more cliffs where the lava had run down to the sea, so we ended up back at A-Bay.

Next, the town of Kailua Kona and Volcanoes National Park.